Torrents causing networking issues

A

agantuk

Explorer
Couldn't think of a sensational title
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The problem I am facing is slightly weird. I run uTorrent on a W7 machine. This is my download rig and has been working excellent for years now. However, I recently started facing issues while downloading certain torrents from IPT. For the record, I have downloaded loads from them earlier too.

Whenever I start uTorrent, the internet connection becomes very choppy. Initially I thought it was the ISP, however, simple ping tests showed me that when uTorrent is running, the machine isn't able to ping even the router to which it is connected to, properly. I get "Request timed out" and "General failure" errors intermittently. It isn't like it goes down fully, it is more an on and off process, but highly irritating as this comes up almost every 3 - 4 seconds. With a little trial and error, I noticed this happens for certain torrents from IPT, and deleting those downloads restores everything to normalcy. However, since today evening I started facing the issue again. This time for a torrent which was working perfectly fine. This torrent also is from IPT. However, my suspicion is now on possible rogue peers. Is such a thing possible? What might possibly be going wrong?
 
agantuk said:
Couldn't think of a sensational title
<


The problem I am facing is slightly weird. I run uTorrent on a W7 machine. This is my download rig and has been working excellent for years now. However, I recently started facing issues while downloading certain torrents from IPT. For the record, I have downloaded loads from them earlier too.

Whenever I start uTorrent, the internet connection becomes very choppy. Initially I thought it was the ISP, however, simple ping tests showed me that when uTorrent is running, the machine isn't able to ping even the router to which it is connected to, properly. I get "Request timed out" and "General failure" errors intermittently. It isn't like it goes down fully, it is more an on and off process, but highly irritating as this comes up almost every 3 - 4 seconds. With a little trial and error, I noticed this happens for certain torrents from IPT, and deleting those downloads restores everything to normalcy. However, since today evening I started facing the issue again. This time for a torrent which was working perfectly fine. This torrent also is from IPT. However, my suspicion is now on possible rogue peers. Is such a thing possible? What might possibly be going wrong?
Click to expand...

How old is your modem ? i find i have to replace them every two years
 
#blr_p Almost brand new TP Link - was replaced by the ISP last month after its predecessor died an untimely death. I also tried with my Belkin and even that shows the same issue

I also don't think it is the router as everything works fine when these culprit torrents are not on. I also verified the cables as they work fine with the other machines in the network.
 
Is your connection to the router USB or ethernet ?

bit stumped here because you said everything worked ok before.
 
IN that case, you could try lowering the number of connected peers. But just for the record, did this issue occur after you upgraded to the newer version of uTorrent?

IMO, also do check the pieces tab and see the number of pieces which have been timed out/not downloading. If there are too many of them, you are being kinda choked with fake pieces.
 
That is weird. You should be able to ping within your local LAN; i.e. the router IP. Can you try a BIOS reset of the router and re-configure it.
 
reading your post, seems to me like utorrent is choking your bandwidth completely. put a cap on the download and upload speeds. if your broadband speed is 2Mbps, keep it as 170-180KB. The additional, space is for overhead of tcp packets. Cap upload speeds to around 30-35KBps.

If you want to browse normally, then keep download speeds to around 150KBps.

There's also a setting in utorrent to cap udp packets too. check that.
 
#6pack, my concern isn't about browsing speeds, but speeds in general. Even when using uTorrent alone, it keeps dropping connection, and like I said, the system itself drops connection which is very strange. I rarely upload anything so that channel is free.

All, after Googling around a bit, and going by my hunch of a bad peer, I came across a software called peerblocker. Now I don't know whether it really works or I just got lucky or the bad peer went offline, after I installed peerblocker, my speeds were back to normal, and more importantly, the machine wasn't dropping the connection. I am now able to ping the router. Still under investigation though. I need to do a few checks, stop peerblocker and see if the issue can be reproduced.
 
I am at work right now, will report back in the evening with more trial runs. I am not totally convinced it was fixed due to peerblock, but I would give it the benefit of doubt after things started working after enabling it. I find it odd that a known bad peer made its way to a private tracker.
 
Update: PeerBlock didn't work. It was just coincidence the first time round. The problem resurfaced late last night and persists. It is happening when some specific torrents are being downloaded. That leads me back to the bad peer track. Is there some way to figure out who / what it might be?
 
Well, just try it with some other P2P block lists. Have noticed this happening mainly on big torrents like TV series.

This is happening with a private tracker? Something is not right then. OR is the private tracker semi private like Demenoid. In which case, could be bad peers.
 
#vivek.krishnan, this is an IPT tracker and I was downloading a TV series, but then I have done this earlier too.

#dinjo, will that help? I mean, do they must be receiving multiple messages from everyone
 
agantuk said:
#vivek.krishnan, this is an IPT tracker and I was downloading a TV series, but then I have done this earlier too.

#dinjo, will that help? I mean, do they must be receiving multiple messages from everyone
Click to expand...

PM me the .torrent name. I can DL from IPT and test it out on my side. PLEASE ONLY PM. DO NOT MENTION IT HERE.

Also are DHT and Peer Exchange disabled on your torrent client. That can cause issues at times.
 
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