Slow Internet Speed Problem

Need help!

My info:

ISP: Comcast
Download Speed: 8mbps (1000 kb/s max)
Upload Speed: 768kbps (96 kb/s max)
Router: LinkSys WRT54G [with newest firmware update]

Currently one torrent going at a decent 100 kb/s and 30 kb/s upload. When the torrent stays on for many hours and eventually I am connected to more "peers", my internet surfing speed drops down bad. Horrible speed to surf. The immediate cure is to kill the torrent. When the torrent is dead I can surf again at regular speed. How can one torrent only going at 100 (when im capable of 1000) ruin my internet surfing horribly? I told the router to only open ports 6881 to 6999 for torrents.

High upload kills your download with most connections. Surfing will suffer too. Try capping upload to ~70 or something and try again.

Some torrent programs may eat ram when they're alone for a while.. but that's another thing.

EDIT: You could try limiting max connections too, of course..

I have no idea if yours is one of the LinkSys routers with this problem, but certain models of linksys routers keep a log of connections or something similar like that for up to five days. Do of course a torrent open, making hundreds of connections, will undoubtedly clog up the router. There's a fix somewhere. Sorry I can't link you, I have no idea where I found out about all this, but you should find it after a little searching =).

I suppose the fix would be to disable logging.

If you open a web browser and input the IP address for your router into the address bar {by default on linksys it should be 192.168.1.1 but if this doesn't work, go Start > Run > "cmd" {without the quotes} > then when the command prompt comes up, type "ipconfig" without the quotes and your router's IP address will be what is shown in the default gateway field}. When you get to the router's webpage, click the Administrator tab. Then click the Log tab. Then select Disable and click Save Changes. Logging is disabled. I think it is disabled by default though.

I think that your problem is that your upload is killing your speed.

Honestly though, we are paying for more speed (96 kb/s total upload) and it gets like that when I cap my torrent at 20 or 30. I'll try your ideas now; thanks!

Originally Posted by Borg1982

Honestly though, we are paying for more speed (96 kb/s total upload) and it gets like that when I cap my torrent at 20 or 30.

If you're using a torrent client that allows you to change the port which it uses--I'm not sure if the mainline client will--you might want to change it to another port; there have been some cases in which ISPs cap the speed on those ports which could slow your internet connection down. (There's a chance, anyway.)
Also, it could be the sheer number of connections being made; see if you can limit your torrent client to 100 or so connections. (That's about all that should be needed anyway.)