strange KTorrent speed problems

jyaan · Last edited by jyaan on Mon Feb 25, 2008 5:27 pm; edited 2 times in total

I'm having speed issues with KTorrent that seem really strange. Often the speed will get up to 120kb/s for a few minutes, but then sink way down to 2-16kb/s for quite a while; though it mostly stays around 15-50kb/s. What's really odd about it all, is that Azureus downloads great, almost always 100-150kb/s.

The problem here is that my system is a few years old; 1.7ghz AMD and 512mb ram, and no plans to update for a while. Azureus is a pretty big Java app and can really slow things down when running a few processes. Using something that is KDE based and written in a language like C/C++ would really be great.

I'm using DHT and UPnp with both, testing on the exact same torrents, with the same port(45517, though KTorrent has me specify a DHT port(6881)and a UDP tracker port(4444), while Azureus only asks for the main one(45517). Encryption is enabled as well, though I'm not so sure it is in Azureus. Regardless, I've tried both with it enabled and disabled in KTorrent. I've followed the guides for port forwarding and all that, though that really shouldnt be the issue considering Azureus works just fine.

Anyone have any idea what's going on here? I really hope it's not that KTorrent is less able, since it seems really great aside from this...

edit: i should have mentioned that when the speed drops down the download status becomes 'stalled' with the kb/s left blank. happens very often.
update: in the 'trackers' section, i got the message "Timeout on server Connection was to tracker.scarywater.net at port 443" i never listed 443 in port options, though, and this is https??. regardless, this is extremely strange since it eventually starts downloading again, but only at the low speed. i get the same message if i try to update tracker, though it keeps downloading (only about 25kb/s, doesnt get back up to speed for maybe 10-20mins, then goes right back down after about 3-5mins). regardless, im not really sure this is related, but i wanted to post it just to be safe.

jyaan · Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 2:28 pm Post subject:

i messed around with the global connections settings and it seems to be OK -- though in azureus i had it set to 50 per torrent and 250 global, so im not so sure... anyways ill test it for a while and see what happens. i was also running two torrents before, so maybe KTorrent just has issues handling multiple torrents.

jyaan · Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 4:48 pm Post subject:

better than before but not up ta azureus. seems to take a very long time getting up to speed. maybe after about 2 hrs, but any interruption and it needs to start all over. hopefully i con do something about that lol. not even sure if its really any better or i just got lucky. a single torrent seems to do better than two running at once. no idea whats going on.

jyaan · Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 8:50 pm Post subject:

ok... now its blasting way to up 100+ when it starts and then hitting the floor at nothing, then trickling back up after a while to abotu 25kb/s... seriously frustrating...

Cyker · Veteran Joined: 15 Jun 2006 Posts: 1746

Are you sure it's not the seeders or something?

Maybe Azureus averages out it's data-rate figures and KTorrent doesn't?

jyaan · Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 2:39 am Post subject:

well, i turned on the logviewer and it seems that ktorrent is failing to connect over and over again between about half the peers, and then finally gets a timeout on some which is when the speed hits bottom.

its definitely not the seeders though, perhaps it might be a issue with my modem getting overloaded (it is rather old（maybe 4 years?) and only cost about $50 back then lol).

regardless, something is causing my connection to crash ( i lose internet access for a minute when it hits bottom ), so i think if i can identify what is causing that i might be able to solve it. ill run some tests and post the data to see if anything can get figured out when i get home.