Torrenting slows internet browsing to a crawl

[mattdevney]

Hi,

I use Transmission on a headless plugbox install, and it all works beautifully, except that when leeching or seeding my internet browsing slows to a crawl. This affects my PC and my laptop at the same time. Pausing the torrents almost immediately relieves the problem. What I tend to do is leave the torrents until I stop browsing, and ramp it up then. It works, but it isn't a great solution. I'd like to prioritise 'normal' traffic over torrent traffic really.

I'm happy to do some diagnostics and then post here, but don't really know where to start... I've looked at some other threads that seem similar, but the steps to diagnose the problem don't really apply. Any ideas?

[blacke4dawn]

Have you set any form of speed limits, because if you have not then transmission is trying to get as high as possible speed that your line can support (and peers are willing/capable of supporting). Good rule of thumb is somewhere between 80-90% of max depending on what max is.

[mattdevney]

Here are some of the settings I'm using:

# more settings.json
{
"alt-speed-down": 50,
"alt-speed-enabled": false,
"alt-speed-time-begin": 1140,
"alt-speed-time-day": 127,
"alt-speed-time-enabled": false,
"alt-speed-time-end": 0,
"alt-speed-up": 10,
"bind-address-ipv4": "0.0.0.0",
"bind-address-ipv6": "::",
"blocklist-enabled": true,
"cache-size-mb": 2,
"dht-enabled": true,
"idle-seeding-limit": 30,
"idle-seeding-limit-enabled": false,
"lazy-bitfield-enabled": true,
"lpd-enabled": false,
"message-level": 2,
"open-file-limit": 32,
"peer-limit-global": 240,
"peer-limit-per-torrent": 60,
"peer-port": 51413,
"peer-port-random-high": 65535,
"peer-port-random-low": 49152,
"peer-port-random-on-start": false,
"peer-socket-tos": 0,
"pex-enabled": true,
"port-forwarding-enabled": true,
"preallocation": 1,
"proxy": "",
"proxy-auth-enabled": false,
"proxy-auth-password": "",
"proxy-auth-username": "",
"proxy-enabled": false,
"proxy-port": 80,
"proxy-type": 0,
"ratio-limit": 2,
"ratio-limit-enabled": false,
"rename-partial-files": true,
"rpc-enabled": true,
"rpc-whitelist": "127.0.0.1,192.168.0.*",
"rpc-whitelist-enabled": true,
"script-torrent-done-enabled": false,
"script-torrent-done-filename": "",
"speed-limit-down": 100,
"speed-limit-down-enabled": false,
"speed-limit-up": 100,
"speed-limit-up-enabled": false,
"start-added-torrents": true,
"trash-original-torrent-files": false,
"umask": 18,
"upload-slots-per-torrent": 14
}

Any ideas based on this lot?

[Jordan]

Here are some of the settings I'm using:

# more settings.json
{
....
"speed-limit-up-enabled": false,
....
}

Any ideas based on this lot?

Yes, blacke4dawn's post before yours has a good idea, I think.

[mattdevney]

Gah! I can't believe I missed that. I take it that if the limits are enabled, the settings are reasonable? And which ones are the right ones to enable? I'm thinking these are the most obvious choices:

Code: Select all

"alt-speed-down": 50,
"alt-speed-enabled": false,
"alt-speed-time-begin": 1140,
"alt-speed-time-day": 127,
"alt-speed-time-enabled": false,
"alt-speed-time-end": 0,
"alt-speed-up": 10,

I think these are just when I use the 'turtle' option, which I intend to use when doing some other major download outside of TBT and I don't want competition of any kind. In which case I'll set them even lower than this.

Code: Select all

"idle-seeding-limit": 30,
"idle-seeding-limit-enabled": false,

This seems more like what I'm after, assuming idle means when not doing anything else on the web. But is 30 high enough? And is my assumption correct?

Code: Select all

"ratio-limit": 2,
"ratio-limit-enabled": false,

Ratio is for when you stop seeding I think - the setting (when set to true) looks like I'll upload 2x what I've downloaded, which seems fair. Am I right?

Code: Select all

"speed-limit-down": 100,
"speed-limit-down-enabled": false,
"speed-limit-up": 100,
"speed-limit-up-enabled": false,

Is 100 about right for both of these? My upload speed is a lot lower than my download speed..?

[Jordan]

Matt, nobody here knows what your maximum upload and download speed is. That's why blacke4dawn suggested "somewhere between 80-90% of max depending on what max is."

"idle seeding" refers to how long you want to keep seeding a torrent when there are no downloaders -- that is, when the seed is idle.

You'll probably want to try turning speed-limit-up-enabled and speed-limit-down-enabled to true.

[mattdevney]

Ok. Sorry. Not intending to come across as stupid or ill-informed. I don't know what 10, 30 or 100 mean - kbps?

Anyway, I've looked at an online speed test and it turns out my results are less than awesome. less than 1 mbps for both down and up. Seems very crap for a line that's supposed to have speeds up to 8mbps - also explains stuttering on iplayer etc.

More to do on this than transmission settings...

Will post again once I've checked my ISP out. Wish me luck, as Sky are pretty rubbish at this.

[Jordan]

Join the club... I wonder if anyone is actually happy with their ISPs

[mattdevney]

Well... I don't know what to say.

I know the score on calling customer services - they ask if you have followed all the steps they recommend before initiating a call. The tests they ask for: is your modem plugged in, is it connected to your main phone line, have you kicked it recently, that sort of thing.

I half read them and then noticed that 1. my speed was last tested and rated earlier this month, which seemed odd, and 2. I hadn't rebooted my router since I plugged in my little server late last year.

I figured it couldn't help to follow some basic stuff first before moaning about capping etc so I rebooted my router.

Lo and behold, my speed went up. Way up:



Before this it was about 20% of that for downloads (uploading was about the same)

Thank you for your feedback x190 - yes, Sky have a lovely advertising budget. That star rating on that img is about right though. I'm hoping I haven't got the stats wrong. Rather than assuming stuff I'll wait for someone else to tell me what those results mean

I've made the other changes you've recommended by the way.

[mattdevney]

Thank you to everyone for helping out. I've changed the settings and it seems better. Will test over the next few days. Now to work out how to automate stopping a torrent once I've hit a certain ratio - as:

Code: Select all

    "ratio-limit": 2,
    "ratio-limit-enabled": true,

Doesn't seem to be enough...

I have restarted the daemon btw.

[mattdevney]

That's what I understood. I download a torrent, then seed it until I've given back twice as much as I've downloaded. Then I stop.

After editing the files I always use the following:

Code: Select all

 pkill -HUP transmission-daemon

I figured that was enough, but let me know if I'm not following proper commands. I'm getting some of my information from here:

http://plugapps.com/index.php5?title=Ap ... ansmission

[Dean Mayers]

My thread got locked as a duplicate so i'll repost my question here.

Mac OS X 10.6.6
Mac mini 2Ghz Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM
Transmission 2.20 (11841)
10Mb/s down, 512Kb/s up connection connected wirelessly (same problem happens when I'm directly connected to the Airport or modem though)
Airport Extreme with wireless N
OS X Firewall is off

Whenever Transmission is open with a torrent downloading my Internet connection gets choked. I can't load any web pages or download anything else. The instant I pause the download or quit Transmission everything goes back to normal. The worst part is that while Transmission is choking the network it only downloads at a maximum of 2KB/s! Every other computer on the network gets choked (There are usually 4 other devices).

For example if I'm downloading something from usenet it maxes out at 1.25MB/s. Then I launch Transmission and my usenet download goes to around 600KB/s but Transmission is only downloading at 0-1KB/s. I quit Transmission and usenet instantly goes back to 1.25MB/s.

Here's an example of a torrent I'm trying to download where this happens:
4GB file
100 peers connected
1 tracker (it doesn't matter how many are connected though)
DL from 3
Ul to 15 (My upload is always maxed out)
700 known
As a side note as I hover over the other clients in the peers list most of them seem to be choking my connections. It says interested and choked. Another side note is that this mostly happens when I download anything other than music. Music is fine and quickly reaches maximum bandwidth without choking the network. Very strange.

My settings are:
Download with maximum of 10 active transfers
Seeding with maximum of 3 active transfers
Upload rate 50KB/s
Global maximum connections 100 peers
Maximum connections for new transfers 10 peers
Prefer encrypted peers is checked
Peer listening port is randomised and is ALWAYS open
Automatically map port is checked

Does anybody have any idea what it happening?

[Dean Mayers]

Please do a bandwidth check using speedtest.net and post a screenshot of the results.

Screen shot 2011-02-26 at 9.20.23 AM.png (40.75 KiB) Viewed 7837 times

[Dean Mayers]

Thanks for the help. My connection speed is pretty much the same at all times of the day. When Transmission works it's fine. I get fastish downloads with no choking of the network. However when Transmission is having an episode it completely blocks all traffic. The problem is intermittent with no real way to predict when it will happen until it does. Then I will just leave it for a few days and try again. It's very frustrating!

I have changed my settings and will see how it goes.

[mattdevney]

The thing is, some transfers will reach your ratio limit before d/l is complete. If you have a transfer going away over ratio during d/l about the only recourse is to lower the u/l speed. The transfer should however, go to 'Seeding Complete' immediately after d/l completes.

That doesn't seem to happen though - whenever I've finished the download, I wait for the upload to halt, and it just doesn't. I've got torrents on ratios of 20 and above that will keep on seeding until I pause it or delete it or whatever. Very frustrating. I can't help thinking it's because its a headless install, but the app should work as per usual anyway right?