When downloading more than 1 torrent at a time, internet crashes

[Nihlaeth]

I recently bought a 17'' macbook pro (i7), and I am extremely pleased with it. Unfortunately, after a week or so I got connection problems and I decided to switch from airport to cable. This however did not fix the problem. I blamed the modem, but after endless rebooting, trying another modem, running network diagnostics hundreds of times, and even lowering the mtu I began to think it was my macbook pro that was the problem.

After a lot of searching I found out that when vuze (my torrent client at the time) was on, a ping script I set up was giving timeouts. After shutting vuze down and waiting a few seconds, the timeouts stopped.
I tried reinstalling vuze, didn't work. Then I decided to switch from vuze to microtorrent (also utorrent). When running utorrent and importing a torrent, the ping kept working. However, when I imported a second torrent, it started giving timeouts again. As soon as I stopped the second torrent, the timeouts also stopped.

This is not bandwidth related. The first torrent can download at more than 500 kb/s without any internet trouble. However, when two torrents together only download at 30 kb/s, internet stops working.

I did not have this problem when I bought my mac, does anyone know how this is caused and how I can fix it?

And of course, when you have connection problems, try shutting down your p2p client

 

[tuna]

Obviously the first step would be to try another computer on your network... my hunch would be that the problem is not your computer. Probably either in your router or with your ISP. Some ISPs might throttle you if they detect torrent activity. So

(1) rule out your computer by testing another computer

(2) rule out your router by connecting both of those computers directly to your modem

(3) call your ISP and see if they have any torrent policies

 

[djasterix]

I think you're being blocked, so ask your ISP about that first. Then try using Transmision, it works pretty well.

 

[Nihlaeth]

I have also a windows pc in this network that downloads torrents without any trouble...

edit: there is no router between my laptop and the modem. There is a switch however, but the windows machine is on that also. I doubt it's the isp, it's called 'xs4all', my partner worked there and they are not exactly anti piracy.

edit2: try translating this in google translater: http://www.xs4all.nl/opinie/2007/01/10/oorlog-in-de-onderwereld/
they call the music industry criminals...

Just to be sure I'm going to try downloading at a wifi hotspot

 

[tuna]

I have also a windows pc in this network that downloads torrents without any trouble...

edit: there is no router between my laptop and the modem. There is a switch however, but the windows machine is on that also. I doubt it's the isp, it's called 'xs4all', my partner worked there and they are not exactly anti piracy.

edit2: try translating this in google translater: http://www.xs4all.nl/opinie/2007/01/10/oorlog-in-de-onderwereld/
they call the music industry criminals...

Just to be sure I'm going to try downloading at a wifi hotspot

Thats probably your problem. Unless your modem has a router built in to it, it will be confused and **** up if more than one computer tries to connect to it. Try connecting just the MBP to the modem without the other computer being connected. If that works then it means that you need a router.

 

[Nihlaeth]

I just learned this is a router/modem, so that is not the problem.

I think it has something to do with the maximum number of connections allowed. Today I discovered that when I have a lot of peers in one torrent, I get timeouts again. When I lower the maximum number of connections from 200 to 100 in utorrent, they dissapear.

If you ask me a torrent client should not have over 100 connections when it only has one torrent downloading and no more than 20 peers. Maybe it's the software after all...

 

[1=1?]

I'm gonna take a stab in the dark and say you have comcast cable internet.

 

[Nihlaeth]

Nope, I'm from the Netherlands