The main purpose of BitTorrent is to share and distribute large amount of data over the internet. They decrease the server dependency on downloading large files over any peer-to-peer network and make a “Swarm” where user can join as a host and download and upload files from each other at the same time.
In this article, we will discuss some tips about boosting torrent download speeds.
1- Get a suitable BitTorrent client
When you think to choose any BitTorrent application for your PC or Laptop, take some time and read the reviews about that application you are going to installed. Some Torrent clients are easy to use, but are difficult to configure, and vice versa. You can check the best BitTorrent client for Windows.
Wikipedia has a huge list of detailed BitTorrent applications with respect to Operating system, features, interface, vulnerabilities etc.
2- Healthy Seeders and Wealthy Peers
Seeders and peers or leechers are the most important part of any torrent file. Large number of both will affect your downloading speed. Basically seeders are those computers who have downloaded that piece of file and helping others to download quickly, while peers are those who are currently downloading and uploading the file simultaneously. Choose the download file which has more seeders and less peers.
It is also important to note that if you see a file with 0 seeders or a file with large number of peers, then there might be a chance that file contain viruses. So always check reviews and comments before choosing any torrent file.
3- High bandwidth allocation
When running any torrent download, always make sure that you mark its bandwidth allocation to High. Bandwidth allocation depends upon your internet speed of downloading and uploading also called up and down.
In uTorrent, you can adjust the bandwidth by going to Options->Preference->Bandwidth.
When you are downloading multiple files then it is suggested to keep the bandwidth of higher priority file to high and the rest to low so that the speed could be managed and distributed equally. It is also suggested to keep the uploading limit to Low.
4- Allow torrents from your firewalls
By default, BitTorrent applications are not allowed and permitted to communicate through firewall which results in blocking of most of the torrent clients.
To enable Torrent to communicate through your firewall, you just need to configure your Control Panel settings and ask the firewall to allow the BitTorrent applications.
5- Choose the right port
BitTorrent uses default ports when installed on any computer. They transfer the data packets using different port numbers and if one port is too busy for waiting acknowledgments, then it will unable to send more packets results in slow downloading.
So always configure your BitTorrent port number greater than 10,000. Recommended range of Port number is in between 200000 to 600000. These port numbers are recommended because they are less frequently used by other applications.
6- Limit the number of peers connection
As stated earlier, it is not good for a torrent file having large number of peers and low number of Seeders. So you should always limit your connection with peers. In uTorrent, this can be done by going to Options –> Preference –> Bandwidth. There you see three different settings for configuration under Number of Connections.
The first setting determines and limits the maximum no. of connections your BitTorrent can have with other clients on the Internet. This should not to be too high nor too low, otherwise either your downloading stops or becomes very slow.
The second setting allows you to connect the number of peers you restrict per download. This should also be set to low so that you have enough packets to boost up your downloading speed.
The third setting allows other computer to download from you. Keep this low restrict them to do so, but keeping it too low recognize you as a bad user. So choose the right number according to your internet speed and usage of torrent.
These are some of key tips which can help your BitTorrent speed up the downloading of torrent files. Experiment with these tips and let us know which tips you found very useful.
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