What's Limiting My Download Speeds?

[nye]

Problem Resolved!

[anon]

This has a variety of causes. Firstly, not even using private trackers is a guarantee you will max your line out - which sites are you downloading from? Tell us that, and make sure you're using good max. connections and upload speed limit settings. I'd also do a Google search for your ISP's name plus "shaping" or "p2p throttling" to see if they're known to engage in such practices.

[nye]

Excellent suggestions, thanks.

[anon]

I use "unlimited" settings and no caps in all of my uTorrent settings. Is that the right way to go?

Nope, it isn't. Thankfully, uTorrent has a "guide" that will auto-detect your connection speed and set them accordingly. Close all other applications, stop all torrents, and give that a try.

My big question is what should my limit be? I mean, I would think I would be able to download at just short of 30MB/s...you know? Is that not possible? What is the cap I should be pleased with on this specific connection, for instance?

30MB/s is possible if there are plenty of high-speed seeders/seedboxes in the swarm, and you have a hard disk that can write at that speed.

Most of the time you won't get continuous, maximum speed, but if you manage to reach 80% of the download rates your ISP is supposed to offer you, you can consider yourself satisfied, I think.

[hulabula]

To check if your ISP's cutting you off, you could call it and accuse them of traffic-shaping, and if your complaint bears any weight your ISP will take off the speed limits promptly; if not, well you have nothing to lose anyway. But I'm sure I've seen plenty of users on IPT forums claiming they have broken 11-15mB/s in download speed, so there's a high chance that your ISP's fiddling with the flow. Mine did.

[axa]

1,5 mb is my limit

[lee551]

Here is a speed test:


My big question is what should my limit be? I mean, I would think I would be able to download at just short of 30MB/s...you know? Is that not possible? What is the cap I should be pleased with on this specific connection, for instance?

(Also, for the record, I see similar percentages off my theoretical max with upload rates.)

Your speedtest shows ~30Mb/s. I think this is classic Mb/s and MB/s confusion (bits != bytes).

Your ISP and the speedtest will quote your speed in megabits per second. Your torrent client will usually show you speeds in kilobytes or megabytes per second. 30Mb/s would be ~3.75MB/s. If you get around 3MB/s on your 30Mb/s line, and around 1MB/s down on your 8Mb/s line, that is correct and you are in fact maxing it out.