Introduction

uTorrent

Torrenting is one of the most common p2p protocol used today to share and download data off the Internet. uTorrent has emerged as arguably the best torrent client so far and this article will be focused on increasing your uTorrent download speeds significantly. The following methods are usable by users from all across the world.

Reasons For Slow Torrent Speeds

• Not Using Protocol Encryption – This will increase your download speed SIGNIFICANTLY if your ISP (Internet Service Provider) is throttling BitTorrent traffic. Enabling this option allows you to bypass ISP throttling. You can check if your ISP throttles your BitTorrent traffic here.
• Uploading At Your Maximum Upload Speed – This will limit your download speed because, you need a bit of your upstream to send an acknowledgment for each received data packet.
• Windows XP SP2 Limits Half-open Connections – This is to slow down certain viruses but it also limits p2p speeds as well.
• Port Used For Torrent Not Forwarded – Many people use something called routers at home. Should the port you use for uTorrent be not forwarded, your uTorrent speeds will be GREATLY limited.

Following all the steps below will solve the above problems, ensuring you get the maximum possible speed for your torrent.

Step 1 – Finding Out Your Upload Speed

You need to find out your maximum upload speed in order to calculate what is the speed you should limit your upload speed to, in order to maximize download speeds in uTorrent. You can visit http://www.speedtest.net/ to do a speed test.

Click on the pyramid closest to your current location to start your speed test.

Convert your upload speed from Mb/s to kB/s. Assuming your speedtest result showed your upload speed to be X Mb/s, to convert it to kB/s (the unit used by uTorrent): X * 128

Remember the result of the above multiplication. We will call it Y for now.

Step 2 – Allow More Half-open Connections

Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista both limit the number of half-open connections to 10, this is severely inadequate for a fast torrent download speed. Thankfully, there is an easy patcher that allows any user to patch the TCPIP.sys
to allow more half-open connections.

1. Download the patcher from here from the official website of http://half-open.com/download_en.htm
2. Run the program
3. Under “New value”, set it to 100 and click “Add to tcpip.sys”
4. Click OK, and cancel any Windows XP warnings and restart your computer.

NOTE: The patcher is known to trigger anti-virus warnings. It is completely safe, ignore the warnings.

Step 3 – Configure Connection Tab of uTorrent

Untick UPnP – This disables auto-port forwarding, and should be left unticked when using a fixed port like our case.
Untick NAT-PMP – Apple’s alternative to UPnP
Port Used for Incoming Connections – uTorrent randomly generates a number in Current Port, this guide will assume the number to be 62956. Note: You will have a different number.

Head over to http://www.utorrent.com/testport first, and check if you have that port number assigned opened or closed. To attain maximum speed for uTorrent, this port has to be open. If you port is open you can jump to Step 4. If it is closed, the following are the solutions:

1. Home Router closed the port – If you are using a router at home, your router probably closed the port you are trying to use by default (in our example, the port number is 62956). You have to foward the port manually. A great step-by-step guide to forwarding your port can be found here. Click the router you are using and follow the instructions on screen. When asked for the port number you want to forward, enter yours (for our example, the number will be 62956).
2. Firewall - Should you be running a form of firewall software, for example “ZoneAlarm, Kaspersky, Norton Internet Securities”, make sure they allow uTorrent access to the port assigned by uTorrent. (Once again, for our example it will be 62956). Normally this can be done by opening uTorrent, your firewall program should have a popup that enables you to Allow the program access.
3. uTorrent port checker might be down – In that case, make sure you try other online port checkers.

Step 4 – Configure Bandwidth Tab of uTorrent

Remember your maximum upload speed in kB/s that I asked you to remember from Step 1 (I assigned it the value Y) Set your maximum upload rate to 80% of Y. In my case, 80% of my maximum upload speed is 60 kB/s. You can follow my settings for Number of Connections for now, but you can tweak it if you find certain numbers work better for you in the future.

Step 5 – Configure BitTorrent Tab of uTorrent

Tick the tick boxes according to my screenshot above. Enable outgoing Protocol Encryption under the drop-down menu and tick to enable incoming legacy connections. This will avoid your torrent speeds from being throttle by your ISP.

Step 6 – Configuring Advanced Tab of uTorrent

Under the advanced tab, click on the words net.max_halfopen and set the variable to 100.

uTorrent version 1.8.3 onwards included a new feature that sends UDP packets in addition to TCP packets. This will will aid in providing you a new way to bypass ISP throttling limits. Click on the words bt.transp_disposition and set the value to 255.

Step 7

Provided your torrent has a good seed:peer ratio, you can now enjoy maximum uTorrent speed. I remembered the first time I tweaked my uTorrent I enjoyed such a significant speed boost I was psyched for the whole day. I am sure you will too. Feel free to ask any questions by posting under comments.