I downloaded Ktorrent and tried to use it for a very large download ( 5 Gb ). My initial prediction wasthat this download would take me 9 days, but this prediction has been steadily increasing so that over 10 hours of download time it is now at 12 days.

I tried reading several pages about increasing connection speed, and I adjusted my router/firewall to make sure that the ports were open.

I can upload at 80kb/sec and download at 300kb/s but ktorrent is downloading at 5kb/s and uploading at 9kb/s.

I am listed as having 30 seeds and 69 leeches, but most of my connections are choked and new connections soon become choked.

My feeling was that I was being considered a leech even though my share ratio was over 1.0.

So I went to a site that can scan my ports and found that all of my ports are currently in stealth mode.

This is my questions:
If I can't find a way to change my ports from stealth to open, will I be able to use ktorrent alt all?

Are the rules in ktorrent such that I will always get the slowest connection?

Am I actually participating in the torrent, or am I losing packets coming in or going out because I am in stealth mode?

Thanks for the help.

oenothera wrote:This is my questions:
If I can't find a way to change my ports from stealth to open, will I be able to use ktorrent alt all?

This could be caused by a setting for "higher security" somewhere in your router firewall settings. But yes you could use KTorrent when you use a firewalled port only you can connect to lesser peers. This could result in a slower download when there are not so many peers available.

Are the rules in ktorrent such that I will always get the slowest connection?

I do not know of the existence of one, why would we need such one?

Am I actually participating in the torrent, or am I losing packets coming in or going out because I am in stealth mode?

No you are participating, but you can only connect to peers who have an incoming port available because either case there need to be an connection to be made.

stoeptegel wrote:lesser peers

Do you mean "lesser peers" (peers of lower status -- what sort of status?) or did you actually mean "fewer peers" -- I can see this, because I'm getting "choked" by most of them shortly after making contact.

Are the rules in ktorrent such that I will always get the slowest connection?

I do not know of the existence of one, why would we need such one?

I mean that the slow connection appears to be part of the torrent protocol's design. Does this problem mean that I'm going to always be treated as a "leech"?

No you are participating, but you can only connect to peers who have an incoming port available because either case there need to be an connection to be made.

By participating, I mean "uploading as well as downloading". In other words, is my client actually acting like a "leech" or just not getting credit for the uploads it's providing?

What do you mean by "have an incoming port available"?

Thanks

oenothera wrote:Do you mean "lesser peers" (peers of lower status -- what sort of status?) or did you actually mean "fewer peers" -- I can see this, because I'm getting "choked" by most of them shortly after making contact.

No i meant fewer peers, and no it has nothing todo with choking.

I mean that the slow connection appears to be part of the torrent protocol's design. Does this problem mean that I'm going to always be treated as a "leech"?

There is no slow peers vs. fast peer design implemented in the bittorrent protocol, there is only tit for tat.

By participating, I mean "uploading as well as downloading". In other words, is my client actually acting like a "leech" or just not getting credit for the uploads it's providing?

It does not act as free leech, it also does get credits for uploading, there are just fewer peers you will be able to make a connect to.(you would not be able to make a connection with peers who are also firewalled)

What do you mean by "have an incoming port available"?

Well, there needs to be an connections established which in either case uses an port on one of both sides to bind on. So an incoming port is just a port which can receive incoming connections.

After doing lots of port scans and even putting my computer in the Demilitarized Zone I realized that my ISP has a really good firewall and is filtering all ports.

Thus my computer is not receiving incoming connections as evidenced by the little warning sign on the lower edge of my screen.

My download prediction is now listed as fifteen days although my own computations would predict that the download will take 23 days.

When I used an outside server to scan my computer it said that I was in stealth mode.
I looked up stealth mode on sheilds up security and it said:

A "Stealth" port is one that completely ignores and simply "drops" any incoming packets without telling the sender whether the port is "Open" or "Closed" for business.Even if this machine had previously been scanned and logged by a would-be intruder, a methodical return to this IP address will lead any attacker to believe that your machine is turned off, disconnected, or no longer exists. You couldn't ask for anything better. Your personal firewall or NAT router protected system is acting like a black hole for TCP/IP packets. That's very cool.

Well I don't think it's cool.

If my ports are in stealth mode, then I take this to mean that if I establish a connection with a peer, and send packets to them, when they try to send packets back, some or all of the packets are just dropped.

But I'm not sure how this effects the bittorrent protocol.

Does this mean that outgoing packets get to my peers, but all or some of the incoming packets are lost, thus I am getting only a fraction of the download information?
or
Does it mean that I get all of the incoming packets, but the next time my peer queries me, it can't tell if I am the same person?

I want to find a way to increase download speed, but I don't really understand how this firewall affects my download speed.

Do you know?

oenothera wrote:After doing lots of port scans and even putting my computer in the Demilitarized Zone I realized that my ISP has a really good firewall and is filtering all ports.

Thus my computer is not receiving incoming connections as evidenced by the little warning sign on the lower edge of my screen.

My download prediction is now listed as fifteen days although my own computations would predict that the download will take 23 days.

When I used an outside server to scan my computer it said that I was in stealth mode.
I looked up stealth mode on sheilds up security and it said:

A "Stealth" port is one that completely ignores and simply "drops" any incoming packets without telling the sender whether the port is "Open" or "Closed" for business.Even if this machine had previously been scanned and logged by a would-be intruder, a methodical return to this IP address will lead any attacker to believe that your machine is turned off, disconnected, or no longer exists. You couldn't ask for anything better. Your personal firewall or NAT router protected system is acting like a black hole for TCP/IP packets. That's very cool.

Well I don't think it's cool.

If my ports are in stealth mode, then I take this to mean that if I establish a connection with a peer, and send packets to them, when they try to send packets back, some or all of the packets are just dropped.

Nope, you would be able to establish a connection to the other side if the other side would be able to receive incoming connections. Over that connection the protocol is just all the same as the connection would have been made the other way around. So it has noting todo with packets getting dropped. you just have lesser chance of connected to all potential peers.

But I'm not sure how this effects the bittorrent protocol.

It doesn't.

Does this mean that outgoing packets get to my peers, but all or some of the incoming packets are lost, thus I am getting only a fraction of the download information?
or
Does it mean that I get all of the incoming packets, but the next time my peer queries me, it can't tell if I am the same person?

No it does only mean that establishing a connection can not be done from both sides. Ones a connection is done, the bittorrent protocol is neutral.

I want to find a way to increase download speed, but I don't really understand how this firewall affects my download speed.

Do you know?

If would only effect your download speed if there are many firewalled peers in the swarm. It is wise for the health of the swarm to have many connectable peers though, this is for fast connecting(otherwise max 30 minutes wait time) (It can also be so that you cannot get your ratio that fast as you would like it to be)