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Frequently Asked Questions
Here you can find the Frequently Asked Questions which will be updated on a regular basis as and when appropriate. Please read through it as it contains important information you need to be aware of along with essential reading such as User Guides and many other cool stuff you may not even be aware of.
    1. Increase BitTorrent download speeds

      Striving to get the most out of your bandwidth? Struggling with slow BitTorrent download speeds? The first step is to see if your BitTorrent client is properly configured through the settings - a simple tweak here and there can drastically improve the download speed. Here are some other suggestions to fine-tune your downloading to maximize those torrents:

       — Do not ‘Force Start’ your torrents. While doing this seems to ’start’ all torrents when some are waiting in a queue, this in fact spreads out your upload capacity over too many connections thus impacting your download speed. You are better off to change your settings to allow more current simultaneous connections/downloads.

      — Do not operate torrents in ‘Super-Seed’ Mode. Super-seed mode is NOT recommended for general use. While it does assist in the wider distribution of rare data, because it limits the selection of pieces a client can download, it also limits the ability of those clients to download data for pieces they have already partially retrieved. Therefore, super-seed mode is only recommended for initial seeding (ie. new torrents from the original uploader), or for re-seeding.

      — Setting a proper upload limit:

      Another thing you can do to optimize your speed with BitComet (or any other BitTorrent client), is to set a proper upload speed. With BitTorrent, you need to upload in order to maximize downloading, but you don’t want to set the Upload settings too high or else now it starts to eat into your download bandwidth. And you don’t want to set it too low, or else the trackers will recognize this and your downloading speed will be reduced. First, set your “Global Max Download Rate” to NO LIMIT. Second, set your upload speed to be about 80% of what your total upload bandwidth is. Do NOT ask your Internet Service Provider to tell you the upload limit, since there are too many variants involved. They can tell you what bandwidth package you subscribe to, but they can’t tell you the real number. Go to www.dslreports.com/tools and click on the ‘Speed Tests’ link there. 

      MAKE SURE that you stop all Internet activity first (P2P, online games, file downloading, etc.) or else you will get false results. Choose one that is nearest your city, or experiment with them. What you’re looking for here is consistent “upload” speed results. Run the test a few times until you see a similarity between all results and the upload speed. For this example, my upload speed is “743 Kbps” or 743 Kilobits/second. But what I really need is the number measured in Kilobytes (not Kilobits), so I must multiply 743 by 1/8 to get it into Kilobytes. 743 X 1/8 (or 743 X 0.125) = 92.9 KB/s. Now I need 80% of 92.9 (or 92.9 X 0.8) which is 74 KB/s (I have mine set at 65 since I run other Internet programs). But the most important thing is for me to keep that setting under 92.9, or it’ll hog some of my download speed.

      For Azureus users, there’s a built-in speed tester right in the program itself. Go to TOOLS > Speed Test… and select either ‘BT Upload’ or ‘BT Download’. However; we found the Azureus results to be about 30% lower than the DSLReports tests (even with an idle connection) so stick with the latter for more accurate ‘overall’ bandwidth results.

      Another thing you should change is the “Max Simultaneous Download Tasks Number”. This is the number of tasks that BitComet can run at the same time - change this to a higher number. Most BitTorrent clients, if not all, allow (and require) an increase in these connections. The default settings are usually set very low to accommodate lower-end PCs and PCs with minimal Internet bandwidth.

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