Transmission killing network

Ask for help and report issues with the Mac OS X version of Transmission
winstano
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Mar 26, 2011 10:50 pm

Transmission killing network

Post by winstano »

Hi all,

Random one here. I've set up my girlfriend's iMac (core duo 1.83GHz, running 10.6.6) with Transmission running. The problem comes when she starts to download a file.

Any files start to download perfectly fine, but after a while they just completely kill the network. Other computers are unable to access anything at all, until the downloads are paused. (I've tried limiting the speed, but that's no help at all, same thing happens.

Bizarrely, it doesn't happen when *I* run Transmission on my MacBook Pro, nor any other torrent client on her machine. It appears to only be Transmission, and only on her iMac. The second you pause downloads (even ones that are running at 80kbps), you can access stuff again.

I've opened up the log, and there's nothing majorly out of the ordinary in there. The only thing that I could see that looked possibly related was "DHT announce done".

I'm not massively clued up on Transmission/BT tech in general, but will be able to provide any more info if needed.

Any ideas? I had thought it could be traffic shaping from her ISP, but I'm on the same network, using the same program, and the same ports, with no problems at all.
winstano
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Mar 26, 2011 10:50 pm

Re: Transmission killing network

Post by winstano »

Cheers, will try and give that a shot today.

I've tried plenty of different ports, and placed her iMac in the DMZ for the router so it's outside the firewall but still having the same issue. I'll try a nightly later on and see how I get on
mikeflynn
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2011 7:09 pm

Re: Transmission killing network

Post by mikeflynn »

I was having the same issue, anytime I had Transmission open the network would go down within 3 minutes. In most cases my seeded torrents didn't even have any activity at the time. I tried limiting global connection and all that but it didn't help. I went back to version 2.12 and it works perfectly again...so it has something to do with the newest version.
Ecologisto
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Mar 29, 2011 7:06 am

Re: Transmission killing network

Post by Ecologisto »

Dear all,

Just to mention that I have the same problem on my computer. With former versions of Transmission (don't know which one) everything was fine. Now, when I download stuff, even at low rates, the network is stuck. My gf that uses the same router sees it as well. It makes browsing the web almost impossible.
However, I have the feeling it is a bit random, some times, rarely, it doesn't happen.

Cheers,
Barth
beerski
Posts: 8
Joined: Sun Mar 09, 2008 8:19 pm

Re: Transmission killing network

Post by beerski »

I had this problem a while ago and tried limiting bandwidth, peers, etc. but nothing worked. Found a thread where someone suggested disabling peer exchange (PEX), and my Transmission has worked flawlessly since.

It used to grind the whole network to a halt but now we can stream Netflix, load web pages and download without any speedlimit set. Something weird going on with PEX.
mikeflynn
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2011 7:09 pm

Re: Transmission killing network

Post by mikeflynn »

Updated to 2.31, still having this issue. PEX disabled. Shame, I really want to use the call-script function, but Transmission just kills my network after being open about 10 minutes.
Jordan
Transmission Developer
Posts: 2312
Joined: Sat May 26, 2007 3:39 pm
Location: Titania's Room

Re: Transmission killing network

Post by Jordan »

Everything x190 says in the previous post is correct, but I would also add that you should first try these steps: [ disable DHT -> exit T -> reboot your router -> restart T ] ... some routers have a difficult time keeping up with DHT.
mikeflynn
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2011 7:09 pm

Re: Transmission killing network

Post by mikeflynn »

Thanks for the suggestions, I will try them when I get home. I know I have DHT off, and my global connections is set at 50 so I will check my settings for active torrents and available bandwidth.
ooze
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Feb 08, 2011 4:17 pm

Re: Transmission killing network

Post by ooze »

I have the same issue with all versions above 2.13. I tried disabling PEX and DHT and limit my connections to 100. Downloads and uploads are slower and sometimes the network goes more or less completely down (very very slow websurfing). With 2.13 have set the connection limit to 200 and PEX+DHT enabled and everything works fine. I guess I'll have to downgrade again.
Sodomy
Posts: 12
Joined: Sun Feb 21, 2010 12:09 am

Re: Transmission killing network

Post by Sodomy »

ooze wrote:I have the same issue with all versions above 2.13. I tried disabling PEX and DHT and limit my connections to 100. Downloads and uploads are slower and sometimes the network goes more or less completely down (very very slow websurfing). With 2.13 have set the connection limit to 200 and PEX+DHT enabled and everything works fine. I guess I'll have to downgrade again.
I have the exact same problem (just made a thread about it without seeing this one). Transmission handled the IP connections fine on 2.13, but once I upgraded to 2.33 it's overload city. I have it set to 50 connections globally and 10 connections per torrent, and it's still maxing out my IP connections on the router (4096). I would love to downgrade to 2.13, except it has a horrible bug on Lion where if I click the triangle to open up a directory inside a multi-directory torrent in the torrent inspector, the app freezes up completely. This is beyond miserable. Can some kind person please somehow fix the bug in 2.13 but keep everything else as is? I might have to go back on 2.13 and just never inspect a multi level directory.

Edited to add: Problem possibly solved!

After a suggestion in #transmission on freenode by the helpful John_, I went under Preferences -> Network, and disabled Micro Transport Protocol (µTP). That cleared things right up. And now my connections have dropped to a manageable 80% level.
ozwalkerz
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Aug 14, 2011 7:26 am

Re: Transmission killing network

Post by ozwalkerz »

Interestingly I seem to be getting the same issue with Transmission (7.22) running on FreeNAS 0.7.2 Sabanda (revision 6694)

I will find a more appropriate place to post of my woes, but I tought it interesting that people on other O/S's seem to be suffering the same problem!

Cheers,

STu
ooze
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Feb 08, 2011 4:17 pm

Re: Transmission killing network

Post by ooze »

Is there anything else I could do to resolve this? The problem is now, that on some trackers the older Versions of T (i.e. 2.13 in my case) are getting banned. So now I'm forced to upgrade. I tried the new version again today (2.33) and immediately ran into the same problems described above. I disabled PEX+DHT+µTP, set global connection limit to 100, restarted the router. The first few minutes everything works ok,but still transfer rates are lower than with 2.13 and they fluctuate really hard, but after a few minutes they drop to nearly zero and after that the whole network is down, not only for me, but for everyone on it.

If there's anything I can do, please tell me, I would be glad to help. Otherwise I'm forced to switch to another client, which I'd really really hate to do, because none of them are as great as Transmission.
ooze
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Feb 08, 2011 4:17 pm

Re: Transmission killing network

Post by ooze »

Thanks for you help x190. I've set down- and upload speeds to about 60% of the maximum. Sadly this didn't change anything, except that the speeds are slower at the start. But the rates still drop after some minutes, and websurfing becomes impossible. I think it has something to with the number of connections. I can't see how many connections are open on my router (AVM Fritzbox), but I have the feeling that there are a lot more than I've set T to use.

I also set active transfers to 10 (both, seeding and download). But since these settings where at 12 before I don't think this will change much.

What now? :-/
ooze
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Feb 08, 2011 4:17 pm

Re: Transmission killing network

Post by ooze »

x190 wrote:
I can't see how many connections are open on my router (AVM Fritzbox), but I have the feeling that there are a lot more than I've set T to use.
You may have a point there. I guess you'd have to go through the manual and see if some values can be lowered.
Are you saying Transmission utilizes more connections than allowed? And what values should be lowered where?
You might also want to read the following:

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=11100#p55989
Well, I use only wifi. So that doesn't help me. So, since not many people seem to have such problems with the newer versions of T, I guess it has something to do with my specific setup. On the other hand the older versions worked just great. If I find the time I will try another router or another mac. I don't know what else to do.
lfrohling
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Mar 13, 2012 11:29 pm

Re: Transmission killing network

Post by lfrohling »

Hi, I had the same problem as above and took everyone's previous post into consideration (and added/tweaked a couple of things) and it works for me!

1) disabled Micro Transport Protocol (no idea what this does but hey)
2) Reduced my download to 1000 KBs (my speed was rated at 5.45mb/s)
3) Reduce my upload to 30 Kbs (rated speed was higher but I can't remember what it was)
4) Set speed limit modes for heavy traffic times (shared internet)
5) Max of 10 active transfers
6) No PEX, no DHT, no local peer discovery, global max =90 peers, and max connections =50 peers, and prefer encrypted peers (in Preferences/Peers)
7) Kept all torrents under the same global scheme.
8) Once setting these things I unplugged the modem and router, readjusted the furniture, then plugged it back in again (took about 5 mins total).
9) internet was down for 10 minutes but then was back up and I can surf and download at the same time.

Result? All my torrents are now downloading not favouring one torrent and ignoring another and everyone else can now use the internet. A big thank you to x190, beerski, Jordan, and John_ (via Sodomy).

PS. I use Transmission 2.42 (13013) on Mac OS 10.6.8
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