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BigJohno

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jan 1, 2007
1,512
738
San Francisco
So I just got COx internet and using it with an apple airport. It seems when ever I download a torrents in xtorrent it goes really slow. Do I need to change any settings so it will go faster?? I think my internet speed is 11megs down and 1 meg up.
 
So I just got COx internet and using it with an apple airport. It seems when ever I download a torrents in xtorrent it goes really slow. Do I need to change any settings so it will go faster?? I think my internet speed is 11megs down and 1 meg up.


I seem to remember a story about some cable companies limiting the speed when accessing torrent sites. It's their way of trying to curb the DLing of pirated files. They're hopnig that you get frustrated and stop DLing said files. Internet policing in a not so obvious way.
 
Also, remember that Torrent is a P2P protocol, which means that you can only download as fast as seeders can upload. If there are few seeders, and if their upload speed is severely capped by their service plan (like most non-commercial home internet service plans are), then it's going to be slow-going.

I've also heard reports of Cox playing internet policeman with respect to Torrent sites (usually it goes under the name of preserving bandwith or some such nonsense).
 
Cox does not slow down P2P networks. On fast private BT servers I get upwards to 1MB - 1.7MB/sec. It all has to do with your ports and configurations. Turn on your NAT in the Airport Utility and open some ports and it should help.

The unfortunate thing is that the Airport is limited in what options you can turn off and on, but should have enough to get a full connection. My main router is a Linksys running a custom WW DRT firmware with 2 Airport Expresses acting as WDS bridges. Because of this all my ports and configurations are handled by the Linksys, not the Airport which gives me many more options to play with.

Even though Cox doesn't care about what you are downloading, they will turn off your internet temporarily if a movie or music studio catches you downloading one of their "trap" files. It seems all you get is a slap on the wrist and then a 5 strike policy if I remember correctly.

Also, change your ports from 6881 to something else. Many sites I use like the 49152 range. Many places try to scope out people using the typical default port.

jon
 
I seem to remember a story about some cable companies limiting the speed when accessing torrent sites. It's their way of trying to curb the DLing of pirated files. They're hopnig that you get frustrated and stop DLing said files. Internet policing in a not so obvious way.
I think they are more likely trying to keep a handful of users from sucking up all the bandwidth than looking to deter piracy (although saying that is a side effect wins them PR points). I read a study done by one of the cable companies (I think it was Time-Warner) that showed something like 5% of their users consumed 50% of the bandwidth.


Lethal
 
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