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NyMetsFan08

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 17, 2008
177
0
Hey everybody !!! I was just wondering which way is faster to download torrent files through wire or wirelessly. I have notice it been taking a long time to download a 700mb file with like 30 seeds. About 4-5 hours wirelessly It use to take me 1-2 hours wirelessly sometime the time jumps up and down. Switch over to a wirelees-n router. Ive notice the program utorrent the files are fast but on azureus and transmission they are slower. Not sure if it has to do with wire or wireless. Any ideas you think there may be blocked ports or something that slowing the speed down. Forgot to say with utorrent connected with wire/multitasking around 700mb file within 1 hour tops on my other computer. Not sure what is going on a couple months ago it use to take like 1-2 hours all the time. Help is appreciated. Thank you very much, bye !!!
 
Shouldn't matter. Your limiting factor will almost certainly be your external internet connection not your internal network.
 
Shouldn't matter. Your limiting factor will almost certainly be your external internet connection not your internal network.
so pretty much it could be the cable modem itself in general? or the cable provider could be blocking something that does not allow that. Maybe I should get a new cable modem not sure.
 
truthfuly as long as you have broadband, it shouldn't matter...it's all in your settings, check to make sure you have your connection prefrences set xorrectly to maximize your download performance, and then make sure you have portforwarding set up correctly(this is increadibly important! without port forwarding i get 20KBs a second...once i set up port forwarding, i get 1mb per second! big difference!)
 
truthfuly as long as you have broadband, it shouldn't matter...it's all in your settings, check to make sure you have your connection prefrences set xorrectly to maximize your download performance, and then make sure you have portforwarding set up correctly(this is increadibly important! without port forwarding i get 20KBs a second...once i set up port forwarding, i get 1mb per second! big difference!)
Hi how are you thanks for the message back. How do you set up port forwarding? any details on how to do it with a netgear wireless-n router. All help will be appreciated I am clueless on setting that up all I know is I see the tab port forwarding when I log into my router. Thats all I really know.
 
truthfuly as long as you have broadband, it shouldn't matter...it's all in your settings, check to make sure you have your connection prefrences set xorrectly to maximize your download performance, and then make sure you have portforwarding set up correctly(this is increadibly important! without port forwarding i get 20KBs a second...once i set up port forwarding, i get 1mb per second! big difference!)
never mind about port forwarding.
 
The biggest single factor I've found is the quality of the seeds. I've had torrents downloading large Wikipedia XML files running as fast as 600-800 Kbps while at the same time, torrents with a comparable number of seeds are as slow as .05 to 10 Kbps. A couple of seeders that haven't restricted their uploads makes a hell of a difference.

I think user upload/download ratios have an impact, but I'm not sure how.
 
so pretty much it could be the cable modem itself in general? or the cable provider could be blocking something that does not allow that. Maybe I should get a new cable modem not sure.

No, your Internet is capped at a certain speed. You cannot download any faster than what that amount is. If you pay more, you can probably get bumped up to a faster speed tier.

Both Ethernet and Airport will far exceed whatever internet service you can get in your house.
 
No, your Internet is capped at a certain speed. You cannot download any faster than what that amount is. If you pay more, you can probably get bumped up to a faster speed tier.

Both Ethernet and Airport will far exceed whatever internet service you can get in your house.

Not 100% true. I'm using Motorola sb6120 modem which is docsis 3.0 and I double my Internet speed that I pay for.

You'll get faster download using ethernet than wifi. And when torrenting speeds depend on the seeders/leechers ratio. Higher leechers to seeders will slow you down and or speeders can lower their seeds to 5kb which is the slowest you can seed.

And I just saw this thread is from 2008...
 
Well, I have 100Mb/s internet service. This equals to about 12.5MB/s actual download.

Connected with a 1Gb/s wire. This equals out to about 125MB/s theoretical speed.

So my wire is capable of 125MB/s but my ISP has me limited to 12.5MB/s.
802.11n wireless should not limit you either.

With the avg internet speed of most people being in the 6-20Mb/s range, then 802.11G is still fast enough. @ 54Mb/s
Some would still be ok with 802.11b it's max is 11Mb/s.

I've tested my iMac which is still 3ft from my router downloading wirelessly or wired and I still hit my download speed cap with either. Now if I am in the living room or bedroom on my laptop, I'll come close to reaching my advertised speed.
I'd say if you are somewhere where you can plug in ethernet, then use it.


***Doh, at responding to a thread resurrected from the grave***
 
Both Ethernet and Airport will far exceed whatever internet service you can get in your house.
Not 100% true. I'm using Motorola sb6120 modem which is docsis 3.0 and I double my Internet speed that I pay for.
Yes, 100% true. Your WiFi network speed still exceeds that of your internet connection, even if you have doubled it.
You'll get faster download using ethernet than wifi.
No, you won't.
 
No, you won't.

Sometimes you will. Not so cut and dry. Distance and weather and radio interference play a significant role. I still get faster DL's by a few MB/s over 100T than over 320Mb/s 802.11n 5GHz. Network speed is no contest. 100T cabled wins every time. Cisco, Apple, d-link, all routers I have ever tested which is fairly extensive. Is it enough to worry about? No. But the results usually favor cabled connects 100T or higher.
 
Not 100% true. I'm using Motorola sb6120 modem which is docsis 3.0 and I double my Internet speed that I pay for.

You'll get faster download using ethernet than wifi. And when torrenting speeds depend on the seeders/leechers ratio. Higher leechers to seeders will slow you down and or speeders can lower their seeds to 5kb which is the slowest you can seed.

And I just saw this thread is from 2008...

I feel like an idiot now, wish I saw the 2008 datestamp...

By "double my internet speed that I pay for" do you mean you are able to achieve faster speeds than your carrier quotes?

I don't see where I said anything that wasn't 100% true, unless you've somehow got 100 Megabits of internet coming into your house which certainly will be bottlenecked by Wi-Fi. I wasn't talking about the lucky guys with Verizon Fios:D

Sure you can probably get crazy expensive internet that is faster than Wireless-N, but we're talking a realistic consumer here, not a business line.

lsvtecjohn3 said:
You'll get faster download using ethernet than wifi.
only IF your internet is faster than your Wi-Fi can transfer data.
My 1.5 Megabyte per second (12Mbps) internet line can easily cap out on Ethernet and Wi-Fi and I see no difference whatsoever in speeds. But, I still prefer Ethernet because I'm a geek and we like running cables that say CAT-6 on them. :cool:

I guess most of this information will pertain to the 90% of consumers that have regular old cable internet and pay for the regular internet tiers. The other 10% that have big juicy 50Mbps internet can and do benefit from all ethernet.
 
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NyMetsFan08 said:
truthfuly as long as you have broadband, it shouldn't matter...it's all in your settings, check to make sure you have your connection prefrences set xorrectly to maximize your download performance, and then make sure you have portforwarding set up correctly(this is increadibly important! without port forwarding i get 20KBs a second...once i set up port forwarding, i get 1mb per second! big difference!)
never mind about port forwarding.

how did you set port forwarding ?
 
Sometimes you will. Not so cut and dry. Distance and weather and radio interference play a significant role. I still get faster DL's by a few MB/s over 100T than over 320Mb/s 802.11n 5GHz. Network speed is no contest. 100T cabled wins every time. Cisco, Apple, d-link, all routers I have ever tested which is fairly extensive. Is it enough to worry about? No. But the results usually favor cabled connects 100T or higher.
You're not getting faster download speeds from torrent sites than your WiFi can handle, unless your WiFi has problems. We're not talking about ideal download speeds from a carefully selected site, compared to a WiFi network that has interference or problems from other sources.
 
If you are having reception issues over WiFi, then obviously the wire is better. Theoretically, neither should be the limitation. But, there are a lot of things that could cause interference with WiFi. Before I got an N Airport Extreme, I was using a cheap G D-Link router that had connection problems whenever it rained or the microwave was turned on (2.4 ghz is free spectrum for a reason; it's the resonate frequency of water and is greatly affected by rain and humidity, and because of that, it's also the frequency of microwaves that work by exciting water molecules). So, it could be your connection, but it's unlikely.

It's more likely to be a difference between the torrent clients you're using. uTorrent is far more efficient in using system resources than Azureus/Vuze, which can bring a good computer to a crawl thanks to the nightmare that is Java. If the system is expending too many resources trying to run the software and run-time environment, it stands to reason download speeds would slow. Transmission shouldn't be too bad though, but I've always found it a little worse than uTorrent.

If you really want to test though, you'd need to try uTorrent or Transmission both wirelessly and wired with the same swarm. Start eliminating variables, and you'll find your answer.
 
You're not getting faster download speeds from torrent sites than your WiFi can handle, unless your WiFi has problems. We're not talking about ideal download speeds from a carefully selected site, compared to a WiFi network that has interference or problems from other sources.

No one gets faster download speeds from a torrent site than their line is rated at. Slower, yes. I know folks who have 100Mb lines and are always complaining because most servers cap you at 2-4MB/s down. Only in rare limited situations do you get the ability to saturate that kind of speed.
Cable "turbo cacheing" boost stops after something like 50-100MB. Then they start to throttle you and drop packets. It is impossible for the Pirate Bay or whatever to make your internet speed faster.
I think I took your comment out of context.
 
Well, I have 100Mb/s internet service. This equals to about 12.5MB/s actual download.

Connected with a 1Gb/s wire. This equals out to about 125MB/s theoretical speed.
802.11G is still fast enough. @ 54Mb/s
Some would still be ok with 802.11b it's max is 11Mb/s.

So my wire is capable of 125MB/s but my ISP has me limited to 12.5MB/s.
802.11n wireless should not limit you either.

With the avg internet speed of most people being in the 6-20Mb/s range, then
I've tested my iMac which is still 3ft from my router downloading wirelessly or wired and I still hit my download speed cap with either. Now if I am in the living room or bedroom on my laptop, I'll come close to reaching my advertised speed.
I'd say if you are somewhere where you can plug in ethernet, then use it.


***Doh, at responding to a thread resurrected from the grave***

you are forgetting that for example 802.11g, has a theoritical speed of 54Mb/s. when i had my old G router, i could only download half of what i could with a wired cable. Also noise because you live around many people can make it worse, or other electronics in the same spectrum.

I have a 40mb/s line, and like i said, i could only download with half the speed on my g router.

But good N routers are cheap now (like tplink), so people just buy one


---------------------


On another note, people should stop using torrents, and starting using USENET, because thats like x31231 times better then torrents, and you maxed out your internet connetion the second you start downloading
 
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henrikrox said:
Well, I have 100Mb/s internet service. This equals to about 12.5MB/s actual download.

Connected with a 1Gb/s wire. This equals out to about 125MB/s theoretical speed.
802.11G is still fast enough. @ 54Mb/s
Some would still be ok with 802.11b it's max is 11Mb/s.

So my wire is capable of 125MB/s but my ISP has me limited to 12.5MB/s.
802.11n wireless should not limit you either.

With the avg internet speed of most people being in the 6-20Mb/s range, then
I've tested my iMac which is still 3ft from my router downloading wirelessly or wired and I still hit my download speed cap with either. Now if I am in the living room or bedroom on my laptop, I'll come close to reaching my advertised speed.
I'd say if you are somewhere where you can plug in ethernet, then use it.


***Doh, at responding to a thread resurrected from the grave***

you are forgetting that for example 802.11g, has a theoritical speed of 54Mb/s. when i had my old G router, i could only download half of what i could with a wired cable. Also noise because you live around many people can make it worse, or other electronics in the same spectrum.

I have a 40mb/s line, and like i said, i could only download with half the speed on my g router.

But good N routers are cheap now (like tplink), so people just buy one


---------------------


On another note, people should stop using torrents, and starting using USENET, because thats like x31231 times better then torrents, and you maxed out your internet connetion the second you start downloading

Is it safer than torrents?
 
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