Hello!

Before you jump on me, yes I've used the search and Google, but I'm still a bit lost as to why things don't seem to work. So, please bear with me.

I'm running SUSE 10.0 and KTorrent 2.1. I've got 8/1 ADSL and Linksys WRT54G.

The problem is the classic - I'm not getting the speed I think I should get. I'm usually downloading only one file at a time. Linux ISO's (like SUSE) and ocassional TopGear. Both usually have lots of peers available (altough at least with KTorrent I do not see much seeders - the numbers in () are always much higher...)

I've tried all the combinations of not limiting upload to limiting it to 30-60. I've experimented with the upload slots from 3-10 even to 20. I've also tried with DHT on and off. I have the ports forwarded from the NAT (same as http and ssh, which both work). Today I just tried to enable the SUSE firewall and not forward the ports. Nothing changed. Then I moved the SUSE to DMZ, again no change. So put it back behind NAT with port forwards.

Finally I went out to search for other torrent clients. The most optimized seemed to be azureus based BitTyrant. (Seems that some want to ban that outright without any reason, others think it's ok. I wanted to use it for comparison.) I picked up one fairly small torrent with lots of seeders. Both have been running for some 10 minutes now. Situation is this:

KTorrent reports:
Leechers 4 (5)
Seeders 4 (21)
share ratio 0.19
downloaded 48Mb

BitTyrant reports:
Peers connected 3 ( 5)
Seeders 9 (21)
share ratio 0.24
downloaded 78Mb
(BitTyrant doesn't seem unfair here.)

Of course, I should also pick some torrent with a few seeders and lots of peers to see what happens then.

BitTyrant seems to be able to connect to more peers than KTorrent. I do not have the IP filter on in KTorrent, so that can not be it. But what am I doing wrong? My computer isn't that new, so I do not want to use Azureus there, I'd like this KTorrent. But I just do not get what I'm doing wrong? And if I'm not doing anything wrong, where can the problem be and how can I verify it?

BTW, why don't they see each others? I can not find either client from the peer list of the other.

HG

One of the ktorrent experts will give you the help you need, I just wanted to pass along some of my experiences with ktorrent - as I used Suse 10.2 until last week and have a WRT54GS router.

I have the WRT54GS router and used the port forwarding web site listed in the "sticky" for slow downloads. My biggest problem was confusing kbs and KBs - I forgot to divide by 8, so when I was getting 35 KBs uploading, I though it was too slow. I upgraded my service and now I get 90 KBS with occassional bursts above 120 . At first I really limited everything but found it really doesn't make too much difference with the seeds I have now.


I am new to all of this , only using ktorrent a few weeks now, but really like it. I do use the ipfiltering, and the UDP port forwarding ( I loaded all the plugins in ktorrent) I usually keep my settings open, no limits on peers or upload/download speeds, but usually keep my upload slots at 10 or less. Depending on the tracker, I may change things.

I did have one situation recently where there were over 100 peers, all leechers and not one seeder - we all were stuck at about 40% or less then the file swapping began , so I opened my upload slots to 60 and enjoyed the show as ktorrent worked the swarm, it took time but we all ended up with 100%. It was fun to watch, ktorrent would get a little bit then ktorrent would lite up all the peer upload slots I could see on the screen with the green check mark for a while, then as they got that bit it would settle back to to receiving.


I tried Azureus, but like Ktorrent better, I had both crash on me when starting or changing settings. I was using OpenSuse 10.2 but recently switched to Kubuntu - It was a little scary at first as I had been using Suse exclusively since 5.3.


I suggest you try getting the Kubuntu 6.1 desktop live (/ install) dvd from the Kubuntu site - the reason I say this is because the activity on that particular torrent will give you some real action to compare various settings. The torrent is very active, too active for me.

I really like KTorrent also (and SUSE). I much rather use KTorrent than Azureus. It's just that there are 2 things that I do not understand.

1) Why can't I get connection to all the peers, specially the seeders? I got more connections with Azureus (well that BitTyrant thing) than KTorrent with the same torrent at the same time. Am I doing something wrong? Or are some people banning KTorrent as client (I've never seen any other peer use KTorrent), which would explain that I got more connections with Azureus.

2) Why the port forwardings / DMZ / firewall things (on or off) didn't seem to make any difference in then number of peers I was connected to or the download speed. I'm sure I've done the forwardings correctly (as they were the same way SSH/http/azureus - which all work).

I just tried KTorrent with a torrent that had huge number of peers. Now I got a lot more connections, but they came on quite slowly. Finally I got my speed record also Though still only about 1/4 or 1/3 of what I got when I downloaded SUSE 10.2 using metalink.

HG

Trackers make a big difference with performance, I don't understand why or how, but I do know there are some public trackers that always are slow, even though a lot of peers are connected. I had one where the download was almost always close to the upload speed, as I changed the upload speed the download changed as well. It was not quick, it seems it takes a while for peers to get connected, and the changes to take effect. I will see many that are connected for a short time and then disappear. As for firewall, the only thing the web site "Shields Up" listed was my system gave ping responses, so I started firestarter and only turned on the ICMP filtering - it didn't have any effect on Ktorrent performance, but I do get a lot of pings blocked in the firestarter log from various peers. I don't know if they ever connect to me or not. Many of the tracker sites list approved clients and the few I checked approved Ktorrent 2.1 +.

Hopefully one of the experienced people can explain it all. I do know there is only one tracker I care about and so far Ktorrent seems to work great there - and fast, but a few people were banned for cheating while using ktorrent ( see "banned" threads) .

BTW, I'm getting this "IP 192.168.1.1 is blacklisted. Connection denied." quite a lot in my log. Why? That's obviously my NAT from inside...

Does that mean a) most people have misconfigured their torrent software to give out that IP, b) my NAT is not correctly forwarding these connections c) there's something wrong with KTorrent, d) my Linksys is possesed or something completely different? I'm getting quite a lot of these.

"IP 192.168.1.1 is blacklisted. Connection denied."

is not in my current log file displayed in ktorrent that has been running over 12 hours . I tried logging on to 192.168.1.1 and checked ktorrent again and still not in the current (running) ktorrent log. Not sure why they are different, I just upgraded the ipfilter yesterday - btw: I really don't know how often it should be updated.

HG wrote:BTW, I'm getting this "IP 192.168.1.1 is blacklisted. Connection denied." quite a lot in my log. Why? That's obviously my NAT from inside...

Does that mean a) most people have misconfigured their torrent software to give out that IP, b) my NAT is not correctly forwarding these connections c) there's something wrong with KTorrent, d) my Linksys is possesed or something completely different? I'm getting quite a lot of these.

It is possible that KT tries to connect to itself, this can happen quite easily when DHT is turned on. Though 192.168.1.1, wouldn't that be the IP address of your router ?