download/upload speeds constantly fluctuates to zero

Discussion of Transmission that doesn't fit in the other categories
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goldensausage
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Apr 01, 2016 8:38 am

download/upload speeds constantly fluctuates to zero

Post by goldensausage »

Ive done searches for similar issues and found a few, but none of them were solved.

When i download anything, the speed fluctuates a lot, and very fast. It can be 3 mBps and then it can drop to zero in a split second, and then it goes back up again and back down. The changes are huge and instantaneous, definitely not how a torrent would normally fluctuate a little and gradual. This happens to every torrent on transmission, although different torrents seem to drop to zero independent of one another (meaning 1 torrent can be zero while others arent zero, and vice versa). I tried running the same torrent using utorrent (different save location of course) and utorrent does not and never have encountered this issue.

Variables i have eliminated:

-not an issue with bandwidth (tried numerous global upload limit settings - 10 kBps, 100 kBps, 1000 kBps, unlimited, made no difference)
-not an issue with listening ports (tried port forwarding, and verified that the ports were in fact open)
-not an issue with ISP (since utorrent/other clients dont have the same issue)
-not an issue with swarm size/seed numbers (same torrent with utorrent, no issue, and its a new and speedy torrent)

I am all out of ideas and all the people/threads having similar issues have never been solved (some threads dating back 7 years ago). Please help. My first day using transmission because i heard many good things about it, and really want to use this instead of the terribly bloated utorrent. I love the interface and really want transmission to work for me. Any help will be appreciated thanks!
goldensausage
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Apr 01, 2016 8:38 am

Re: download/upload speeds constantly fluctuates to zero

Post by goldensausage »

Its not a torrent specific issue because i tried the same torrent on another client and it doesnt have the same problem. ive gone through 5-6 different torrents on transmission and they all fluctuate to zero. I remember someone from a previous thread suggested setting a download cap and i've tried that, doesn't work. I changed it back to unlimited download.

Why doesn't uTorrent cut it? Im no expert on torrents or torrent clients so I dont understand what you meant by that. Im merely using it to demonstrate that the issue is not with the ISP or the torrent swarm by stating uTorrent does not encounter the same issue, because if that were the case then every client would exhibit the same behavior. Im just trying to narrow down the potential causes.

And what do you mean by not a big issue for 99.99% of users? Are you saying many other people have been encountering this as well? If that's the case then this should be quite problematic since it keeps dipping to zero, and often stays at zero for a while before going back up. It's basically only actively downloading half of the times. I also want to point out that, when the download speed dips to zero, the upload also dips to zero at the same time.
goldensausage
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Apr 01, 2016 8:38 am

Re: download/upload speeds constantly fluctuates to zero

Post by goldensausage »

I've done that on google and could not find any solutions. I also searched in this forum's search bar and every result returned were from this thread.

The issues im having are with transmission, not uTorrent. Most people point out things like every torrent is different/not enough seeds/not populated enough/ISP throttling/port blocking/uploading too fast. This is why before i even started this topic i've already done some of my own checks to confirm that they are not the issue. From google search i ran into a 4 year old thread in which you have posted there before talking about highly fluctuating speeds - mainly a performance issue, but different from my issue. In that thread it was suggested that the disk of a low performance NAS was at fault. I've also tested this not to be the case for me, as i've also tried downloading to a local SSD, external HDD, and a LAN connected NAS and still the same issue. I've tried almost every basic debugging i could think of before starting this topic lol.

Anyways, thanks for the help. Looks like im out of luck. I guess ill just fall back to other bt clients for now. I heard transmission will be released for windows soon. Ill try that out and see what happens when it gets released i guess.
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