Slow downloads via Bit Torrent

[Mattk]

Fingers crossed my broadband prolbems have been fixed but now I am gettng painfully slow downloads via bit torrent. The pc I am using used to downbload torrents at a good pace and when first connected to wireless the same was also true but now for some reason downloads barely reach 10k/sec.

Is there a logical reason why? Maybe I have to forward ports to suit the homehub but as I say, on the 1st day of having wireless and the homehub they were fine.

Normal downloads are fine its just biut torrent and Ive tried several different torrents.

Thanks.

[Daisho]

It's all down to the seed/leecher ratio, if the torrent is popular and there are many seeds then it should move quite fast if there are only a few seeds and lots of people trying to download (Leechers) then it will slow to a crawl, It's also how other people have set their upload limit up, most people are mean and only have it set to a couple of Kb/sec but I've seen it where there has only been a couple of peers on which have allowed their upload to be quite generous.
It's best just to set it off and come back later if its slow as it might pick up.

[ChuckFickens]

Aside from the fact that you probably shouldn't be downloading these things in the first place (most torrent downloads are illegal (apologies if you are downloading legal things from a torrent), and also they pose a huge security risk to your computer)

A lot of ISPs will do what is called traffic shaping where they will reduce the bandwidth available to you for certain types of activity and torrents are one activity that is very often throttled down to a lower speed.

Check your ISPs terms to see if they do traffic shaping, if they do then that's probably why you are getting slow downloads.

[casson57]

The most imporatant thing to consider to be able to say that this download can reach you maximum bandwidth that is being offered to you by your ISP is the "seeds". If you go to http://piratebayuk.me.uk/ and search your torrent that you want to download you need to pick the ones that has the highest seeds.