P2P destroys my internet!

Locust76

I'm having a problem. Whenever I load a P2P program, such as downloading torrents or the Blizzard Updater, my entire internet dies. My IM programs lose connection, VOIP stops working and I can't do anything internet related besides downloading the stupid file. No web pages, no email, nothin'.

It got so bad today that when I was downloading the WoW patch, it even kicked my girlfriend off the phone line (I guess it's a VOIP phone because it connects through the cable modem).

Is there a way to remedy this? My ISP (ish.de, a German ISP) gave me a Motorola cable modem and I have a Netgear router. All clients are connected via Wi-Fi.

Anybody?

Incendius

I know that when I used to use any kind of P2P software (Or downloaded too many files, or talked to too many people, or accessed too many webpages, God I hated that thing) then my netgear wireless adapter would bluescreen my computer - perhaps this is a slightly less excessive example of the same thing? Are all your wi-fi adapters Netgear?

Locust76

Incendius wrote:

I know that when I used to use any kind of P2P software (Or downloaded too many files, or talked to too many people, or accessed too many webpages, God I hated that thing) then my netgear wireless adapter would bluescreen my computer - perhaps this is a slightly less excessive example of the same thing? Are all your wi-fi adapters Netgear?

No, the WiFi adapter in this machine is an onboard jobbie by Realtek (RTL 8187) and my girlfriend's computer has an old Linksys PCMCIA B/G card.

robotbebop

P2P programs consume a lot, A LOT of bandwidth unless configured to throttle bandwidth usage. BitTorrent being the biggest offender.

What is your download speed? What speed do you usually get when downloading normal files from your web-browser?

You can go to dslreports to see what download speed you actually get.

If your downloads are clogging bandwidth up enough it will slow down everything else naturally, but it may be slowing them down enough that other devices/software using your connection are timing out at the server and getting disconnected.

Locust76

My cable line:


(I get 3,506kbit/sec down and 438.2kbit/sec up on a server here in Germany, but they're not so fancy-schmancy with the graphics like the DSLReports people are )

I guess I should also reiterate that tonight's P2P activity also killed our regular house phone which is connected before the router directly into the cable modem.

fforde

Your P2P app is probably opening too many connections and overloading your cable modem. I have had this problem in the past with my router. With most bittorrent clients you can set the maximum number of connections allowed to be open at once. You might try lowering this value. That doesn't help much for the Blizzard downloader though. If you keep having issues, you may call your cable provider and ask if they have any different brand cable modems you could swap out for.

robotbebop

Locust76 wrote:

My cable line:



I guess I should also reiterate that tonight's P2P activity also killed our regular house phone which is connected before the router directly into the cable modem.

Your bandwidth looks pretty good. Maybe it's time to look into your P2P software settings and start throttling things down a bit to see if that helps.

Use a good BitTorrent client like ABC which has more options than the standard downloader.

Also, since your phone is obviously VOIP, it is subject to the conditions of your internet connection; and if that connection is clogged, it's going to suffer as well. Kinda why I don't use VOIP.

Librarian

I am from Germany and I have the same problem, so would be very interested in the solution.

My ISP is Netcologne, so it is probably not really an issue of ISP, but whenever I start bittorrent everything else shuts down, even when I am not downloading anything with it.

Locust76

Librarian wrote:

My ISP is Netcologne,

Heh, is there some kind of Anti-P2P law here in NRW?

lunarwulf

What kind of memory does your machine have? If downloading and going online is shutting your computer down, you may be using too much memory, this will take you to the blue screen of death and automatically reset your connection. Your computer will in essence send a reset to the receiver and it will restart in about a minute or when you start your computer back up.
You can lower the bandwidth throttle and limit your surfing to one page at a time while waiting on your download.
-or-
You can get more memory.

EggyToast

Yeah, you're throttling your connection. Same thing happens to me if I let BitTorrent apps use all of my upload bandwidth. Everything dies, then the upload fails. Then it comes back, only to happen again.

I fixed it by limiting upload speeds, which inherently limits connections as well. I would recommend putting it at half of what the first report says (so limit upload to 30).

fightinfilipino

EggyToast wrote:

I fixed it by limiting upload speeds, which inherently limits connections as well. I would recommend putting it at half of what the first report says (so limit upload to 30).

i normally don't lime things, but this is absolutely correct. allowing P2P programs that use BitTorrent-like protocols to completely eat up your upload speed really kills your internet connection in general. limit upload speeds and you should be ok.

(i would also use ProtoWall to filter unsavory connections as well...)

Invisible

Is there a certain port that should be used with bittorrent?

I just noticed that I had utorrent set on "Random Port on startup" which has royally fuck up my downloads. I can't even find a good port, I either get two reds or one will download at 5.5 (or maybe 10, while uploading at my cap of 20) and the other won't download at all. There's no lack of seeders or peers (at least 80 seeders and 1,000+ peers) and before I was downloading at 300kbs.

fforde

Invisible wrote:

Is there a certain port that should be used with bittorrent?

I just noticed that I had utorrent set on "Random Port on startup" which has royally fuck up my downloads. I can't even find a good port, I either get two reds or one will download at 5.5 (or maybe 10, while uploading at my cap of 20) and the other won't download at all. There's no lack of seeders or peers (at least 80 seeders and 1,000+ peers) and before I was downloading at 300kbs.

Pick a static port and then enable port forwarding for that port on your router. And if you have a firewall on your PC make sure it is leaving that port open.

Sushisource

What kind of router do you have?

Linksys WRT54G is a very popular router that can mess up bad with P2P programs, I had and issue with it. But it can be resolved with some firmware upgrades.

Locust76

Sushisource wrote:

What kind of router do you have?

I have a Netgear WGR614v6 router with the latest firmware.

lunarwulf wrote:

What kind of memory does your machine have?
...
You can get more memory.

I have 4GB of DDRII 677... I think I'm ok in that regard

I think the "too many connections" thing is right, but how can I limit connections? With the Blizzard downloader? Probably not, huh?

For P2P transfers I use Morpheus, but the motherfucker doesn't actually, you know, listen to me when I change the settings. For example, I can set maximum bittorrent connections to 1 and it will still show 3 or 4. I can set the maximum upload to 1kb and it will still show 10-20. Goddamn thing.

Can anyone recommend a good P2P program that does what's asked of it?

yotes

Locust76 wrote:

Can anyone recommend a good P2P program that does what's asked of it?

µTorrent
Azureus (needs JavaVM installed)