How-To Speed Your µTorrent Downloads In Windows 7

Most torrent users know that the initial key to success is to search and find good working torrents, once they find, the second step is to make the best in order to achieve the highest download speed.

Regarding the first we cannot do much more than a good search and try to cover the maximum of possibilities in order to make a good choice. However when we talk about Download Speed, this is the aspect of torrent download where we will find the widest range of opportunities for boosting our torrent downloads.

Today I'm going to share with you some tweaking tips I found very helpful in the empowerment of torrent downloads. In this article I'm going to try to cover as many points as possible in order to provide a comprehensive torrent download speed enhancement guide mainly for µTorrent installed in Windows 7, anyways, it will work all the same in Win XP.

Making Good Choices

Above I talked about making a good torrent choice. So first we must understand some frequently used terms: P2P stands for peer-to-peer computer network, peers are the computers involved in the torrent files download/upload process, seeds or seeders are those points (computers) where complete copies of the shared files are held, and finally leeches or leechers are those computers having an incomplete copy of that file or has just got connected to the network in order to download that specific file which when is completed turns a leecher into a seeder.

Having understand these few basic concepts, when we look for a torrent file we should pay attention to numbers, the larger numbers for seeds the better is the torrent and also is better the possibility to achieve a higher download speed. Common sense tells us to preferably select those files with a large number of seeds and smaller number of leeches.

The second choice we have to make may sound a bit obvious but it is about the torrent client we are going to install. There are so many to choose from and some of them are really efficient software. Above all I prefer µTorrent because it is a lightweight and efficient BitTorrent client. The most important issue about the torrent client is to keep it updated to its most recent version. Secondly, we have the client tweaking, and these tips go for it:

Tip 1 Firewall Unblocking: go to Options → Preferences → Connection → and there check Add Windows Firewall exception. Also make sure Windows Firewall is configured in order to admit connections. It can be configured to do this by checking the torrent client on the list of allowed programs, you go like this: Start → Control Panel → Windows Firewall → Allowed Programs.

Tip 2 Limits: let's take a look at the download and upload rates, first of all search for an online broadband speed checker (there are a lot of them) and find out what your upload and download maximum speed are (to my 640 K connection it was 580 for download and 110 for upload) so, to have a balanced overall speed you must set your upload rate limited at about 80% of the maximum speed. Go Options → Preferences → Bandwidth → and there set Maximum upload rate (kB/s) value (it was 88 in my case). It has to be done like this because an unlimited upload rate has an impact on the download speed.

Tip 3 Port configuration: First of all disable Randomize port each start under Options → Preferences → Connection (over Add Windows Firewall exception which we have just enabled, see screenshot) after that set the port number over 10000 to avoid problems with other applications and also ISP traffic which is usually throttled between number 6881 and 6999 ( µTorrent defaults)

Tip 4 The rest of the figures: Having in mind that my upload max speed is 110 and download is 580 It should look like this:

Note: For the last figure in particular (Number of upload slots per torrent) you can run the Speed Guide in the Options menu. It is also advisable to check the box for Use additional upload slots if upload is <90%.

Note 2: Additional tweaking to the number of simultaneous connections can be made through the patching of TCIP.SYS file in the Windows\Sysytem32 folder but I consider it a risky action because it lowers system barriers against viruses multiplication, thus, I don't recommend it at all. Also be aware of programs which promise to fantastically increase your download speed some may work others may not, it will always depend on your particular configuration.

To Sum Up

I hope you find these tips for torrent download speed up, as always we are open to hear about any additional tips you tried and worked, so share it with us!