µTorrent Help: Dealing With ISP Interference [1]
µTorrent Help: Dealing with ISP Interference
Introduction
If you are having troubles with your torrent transfers in µTorrent or BitTorrent, after Optimizing µTorrent (or BitTorrent) for Speed [3] and choosing good torrents [4], then your ISP may be interfering with bittorrent. This section offers some information on determining if there is interference and how you can try to circumvent this interference.
Since µTorrent and BitTorrent are identical bittorrent clients, developed by the same company, this guide applies to µTorrent or BitTorrent.
For a listing of the other µTorrent (or BitTorrent) help pages here at Gizmo's Freeware, please see
For a listing of all the bittorrent help pages here at Gizmo's Freeware, please see
Check for ISP Interference
VuzeWiki: Bad ISPs [7] to see if your ISP is known to interfere and for suggestions on how to circumvent their interference. If your ISP is not listed, your ISP may still be interfering.
Network Management many ISPs have public policies on network management. These generally throttle speeds during peak hours. A Google search of the name of your ISP and "network managment" or "fair usage" will usually find the page at their site with this information.
Encryption
If your ISP is interfering with bittorrent transfers, Protocol Encryption of your µTorrent communications may help. µTorrent offers a variety of options regarding encryption. The settings for encryption in µTorrent are at
Options>Preferences>BitTorrent.
I would suggest starting with outgoing encryption enabled and enabling allow incoming legacy connections. If you see no improvement, leave at enabled, but disable allow incoming legacy connections. If that does not show improvement, then try setting outgoing to Forced and leaving allow incoming legacy connections disabled. If none of those makes a difference, then reset to outgoing encryption enabled and enabling allow incoming legacy connections.
A. Outgoing: The Outgoing dropdown menu allows you to select the mode of encryption that you prefer µTorrent to establish. All modes will accept incoming encrypted connections, and the encryption is 2-way.
- Enabled - This is the recommended option for all users, as it provides µTorrent with the largest pool of peers to pick from for connecting to. Allows µTorrent to establish encrypted and unencrypted outgoing connections, depending on how the peer responds to the handshake.
- Forced - forces µTorrent to establish only encrypted outgoing connections. Any peer that doesn't support encryption will not be connected to. This should only be used if your ISP actively thwarts unencrypted outgoing connections as it will limit the amount of peers you can connect to.
- Disabled - will force µTorrent to attempt to establish only unencrypted outgoing connections. This should only be used if your ISP throttles all encrypted transfers (like Rogers).
B. Allow incoming legacy connections:
- Enabled - allows µTorrent to accept unencrypted incoming connections. This is the preferred setting as this will allow for the most connections to peers.
- Disabled - any incoming connection that is unencrypted will be ignored. This should only be used if your ISP actively throttles unencrypted incoming communications.
Lazy Bitfield
Some ISPs (like my Comcast) interfere with seeding. The usual symptom of this is that upload is fine while downloading, but connections cannot be maintained after the download is complete. Enabling Lazy Bitfield has µTorrent always send send a faked incomplete bitfield, which may help in defeating this ISP interference. Set peer.lazy_bitfield to True to enable.
The setting for this in µTorrent is at Options>Preferences>Advanced.
Conclusion
Hopefully this guide has helped you in dealing with your ISP interference..
If you find a mistake in the guide or have a question, please post here or in our Forums [8].