Transmission is unusable.

So... I have a huge problem.

Torrenting is a phenomenal way to share files, and most people rely heavily on it, right? I'm a Mac user since 2011, and I know pretty well my way around anything tech related.

However, since I only had WIFI in my house recently, I'm just now learning more about the potential of torrenting/routers/etc.

Everybody needs a good torrent client, and the list is short. Bittorent's app is not accepted everywhere, and it is just a copy of the more up-to-date, more used, utorrent (from the same company). I believe that this is the most used app.

However, utorrent looks like **** on a mac, compared to transmission. If Apple made a torrent app built in, it would be transmission. It looks amazing, is light, has great features (labels, colors, etc.) and it is easy to use. Also, the website is cleaner and doesn't try to make you download crap.

But here's the thing: Transmission is archaic and impossible to recommend to pretty much everybody. Why?

Because it will eat your bandwidth. You have to manually set the limits or have a great internet connection to be able to browse while torrenting. Pages won't load for most people, if transmission is being used.

How is it possible, that such a app still has that problem? It's mind puzzling. utorrent, obviously, takes care of your bandwidth automatically. This means that you will play internet games without a problem. You will load pages without any hassle, and when they are loaded utorrent goes full speed. You don't even need to think about it.

Is there anyway to fix this huge problem, or the only solution is just to send transmission to the trash can? Viable alternatives (transmission-like but with automated bandwidth management)?

Looks like utorrent is the way to go.

Mr_Brightside_@ said:

Not sure where your issue is coming from. It's odd that it appears to be limited to Transmission specifically.
I use Transmission exclusively at home and regularly get 2-3MB/s down, and have no issues browsing or streaming simultaneously. I don't know that I've ever manually changed Tranmission's settings, either.

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Obviously you have a great connection for today's worldwide standards, so your situation doesn't apply. And yes, Transmission does not have the ability to automatically manage bandwidth.

Templex said:

Try setting Transmission's global max connections to somewhere around 10-15, this helps a lot with lag while torrenting in my experience while maintaining decent download speeds.

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That doesn't make any sense. During the night and some periods during the day, I want my connection to go full speed. Maybe I want it now to go full speed, but maybe in 5 minutes I want to play team fortress and watch 120 HD videos at the same time.

I'm sure you get my point. It's inexcusable.

556fmjoe said:

What's wrong with just manually setting limits?

I've used Transmission for years on Linx and BSD and it has never been a bandwidth hog. It's my go-to torrent software.

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Maybe you have a great connection. "What's wrong"? Are you kidding me? I want to download something as fast as possible, but when a webpage is loading or when I'm watching TV Shows and Movies I want the necessary bandwidth. Manually setting limits would be a tremendous pain.

simsaladimbamba said:

If you do not limit the upload bandwidth, Transmission will use all the available bandwidth, thus loading websites get slower, since websites communicate with your computer what has already been downloaded and what is still needed to view the site. A very narrow upload bandwidth will slow that process down, since data has to be uploaded by the browser to ensure that communication with the website.

If your upload speed provided by your ISP is 1 MB/s for example, limit it to 500 KB/s in Transmission and see where you are going.

I have a very low upload speed, around 120 KB/s, thus I limit Transmission to 50 KB/s and browsing the web is more than fine with that setting.

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The problem is that my connection speed varies during the day. Besides, Transmission could be only using 10 KB/s (global), but since it would be constantly searching for seeds and peers, it would bottleneck the connection anyway.

uTorrent manages it beautifully. Even on previous threads with similar subjects, people complained about this in transmission. It's pathetic, actually. Seems like such an obvious thing, especially now that more and more people use the web, especially in less developed countries. Bandwidth is a crucial resource, and transmission doesn't know what to do with it besides eating everything it can.

Weaselboy said:

This might help you. Set the upper setting to close to your max speeds for when you don't need to use the Internet for anything other than torrents, then set the lower section to slower speeds leaving you some bandwidth for web browsing etc.

You can schedule it by time of day, or just click the turtle at the bottom left of the main screen to drop to the lower speeds.

You also may need to lower global connections peers tab of prefs. Some routers choke and reset if that limit is set too high.

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First of all, thanks for trying to help.

But:

Why do you guys tolerate that? I mean, when I'm posting here, the torrent can be downloaded as fast as it can. Right? When a page stops loading, same thing.

Isn't this just way simpler and better?

26139 said:

Not sure what your objection to manually managing bandwidth is.

The "automatically manage bandwidth" part is never really explained, so who the hell knows what kind of caps are put on.

Don't you like having some control over this kind of stuff?

I have mine limited during the day, open at night. Have for years. Way better than using uTorrent.

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We tolerate it because it's a free service that works pretty well.

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What? When you are answering me, why isn't transmission going full speed? When a page starts loading, why isn't transmission as smart as utorrent and manages things accordingly in a fraction of a second?

Do you realize the difference? Even between casual web browsing and periods while you aren't stressing your connection, utorrent goes full speed and you don't have a problem.

How in the world isn't that instantly seen as a 1000x better approach?

26139 said:

*Because I like the interface of Transmission 100x more, it's way nicer to look at,* and I learned long ago not to bitch about the capabilities of free products unless I'm willing to improve them.

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From * to *, I agree. It looks way better.

About the rest? Please. uTorrent is free too and being free or not has nothing to do with the subject.

Transmission is inferior to a modern torrent client just because of that feature.

macsforever said:

As long as it DL's that's all you need... Transmission works great for my needs, 80 GB DL's are NO problem.... just use global BW limits, and your UP speed is the issue, not so much the downloading speed... sending the request to the server is what makes the experience slower, not the DL speed.

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Well, I can't use it during the day if I want to browse and have fasta downloads, so it isn't all I need.

tooobe said:

This "problem" you're having probably has more to do with your internet connection than Transmission. Sure, uTorrent handles it automatically and Transmission doesn't, sort of. If you had a decent internet connection it wouldn't be a problem.

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Define "decent". Yes, far from being great, but good enough to have what I want from uTorrent.

It is a problem (and it is only to get bigger once the rest of the world comes online) only if I use transmission.

nexus4life said:

You want to use Transmission. It doesn't have an automatic bandwidth adjusting feature you want. So you really aren't going to accomplish anything other than by deciding to switch to uTorrent, which DOES have the feature you want. That's really pretty much it. Manual limits in Transmission or uTorrrent.

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Honestly, I thought some transmission Dev might be around here and would explain it to me, or telling when the mentioned feature would be available.

But you are right, utorrent it is. I even managed to make it somewhat cleaner.