Downloading lags internet

[broknindarkagain]

I'm using Vista Home Premium SP2 x64. Whenever I download anything via uTorrent, my internet speed drastically decreases....to the point that some pages will time out in my browser. This happens when my XP machine over wireless is using uTorrent as well. My internet setup is a 3mbit DSL connection. The modem AT&Ts 2wire wireless gateway ( http://store.att.com/Catalog/ProductDetail...tegoryId=catMRG ). My vista machine is hooked up via ethernet and the XP machine is hooked up via wireless. It doesn't matter if total download speeds in uTorrent are at 10k or 500k, it screwes up browsing either way.

Any ideas on what the issue could be? I have the ports forwarded properly for each machine.

[Kotuku]

Check with your ISP, they more than likely throttle any Torrent connection to fairer share their available bandwidth. If so, you are stuffed.

Remember also, the Torrents upload from your computer at the same time you are downloading, so there is a double whammy on bandwidth. Grab one of the neat Bandwidth Gadgets for Vista. One called Network Traffic works fine and you can visually see what is happening.

Get into your Modem's set-up page and see what speed it is connecting to the outside world at when you are not on a Torrent and when you are. If they are the same speed, then the throttling is upstream of you at your ISP's

[CoffeeFiend]

There's also the half-open connections thing that might interfere, and your router's max concurrent NAT sessions.

[broknindarkagain]

http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Bad_I...ates_of_America

According to that, my ISP doesn't limit torrent connections (AT&T Bellsouth).

Can you explain the half open connections a little more?

My problem isn't with the torrent speeds, its with my browsing speed while torrents are downloading. For example, right now my torrent is running 51kB/s down and 18kB/s up.......and it took almost 30 seconds to pull up this forum. My speeds via the modems ip page are down - 6163kbps and up - 509. They don't change when I'm using torrent and when I'm not

[Tripredacus]

uTorrent uses UDP and not TCP. This is a known behaviour of UDP vs TCP torrents. UDP lets you download the files faster but has no bandwidth cap and takes bandwidth away from other protocols. Also it depends on how many active downloads you are using.

uTorrent using UDP was a direct response to Comcast (among others) attempting to limit standard BitTorrent clients bandwidth.

Further Reading:

http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2008/12...snt-falling.ars

http://bennett.com/blog/2008/12/bittorrent...n-the-internet/

As far as your internet speeds, online speed tests are not reliable. If you've ever downloaded something large "the old fashioned way" you'll notice your speed is very fast at the start. These online speed tests will send a very small file and you see your speed is very high. But try doing a full on FTP download from your ISP (if they allow you that option) to do a real speed test. ISPs can only garauntee the speed within their network. Also, your upload speed on uTorrent should be 0KB because sharing files (99% of the time) via P2P is illegal.