Upload speed

tomekomoh

Does anyine know how to increase upload speed?

AnkR

In addition to managing your port properly and NOT setting the uploads speed at maxed out settings, there really isn't much to be done. Things depend on your Internet connection further, i believe. Or is this a specific question but just vaguely put?

pppucci

@AnkR:

In addition to managing your port properly and NOT setting the uploads speed at maxed out settings, there really isn't much to be done. Things depend on your Internet connection further, i believe. Or is this a specific question but just vaguely put?

What settings for upload speed are optimal?

MrMazda

This largely depends on a few factors, the three biggest of which are:

The upload speed that your ISP provides for your internet connection. Most residential internet connections have a substantially slower upload speed than their download speed, so be sure to find out what your connection's limits are.
Whether your ISP uses traffic shaping to throttle your speeds based on the presence of P2P traffic from a computer on your connection. If this is the case, a VPN such as PrivateVPN will get you around this problem. Also, if you're on a DSL service and your ISP supports it, you may also be able to get around this problem with the use of MLPPP. If you wish to go down this avenue and your ISP doesn't offer technical support for MLPPP, I would be more than happy to assist you with it. On my connection here I am on a 3 line (soon to be 4 line) MLPPP setup, but this is largely because a single line simply won't deliver a reasonable speed.
Whether you have the correct port for your torrent client forwarded both in TCP and in UDP from your router to your computer. This is the #1 most frequently missed step in the process that results in little to no upload traffic.

Of course, there are a few other factors, such as the number of leechers actively downloading the torrents, their connection speeds, what all else they're connected to, and so on, but the above 3 factors are the 3 biggest factors.

Also, remember, that DSL technology, especially the older DSL technology from the pre-Y2K era is a dying technology with very limited potentials. In terms of upload speed, you'd be looking at the following:

Copper ADSL2: 512 - 800 kbit
FTTN ADSL2: 800 - 1088 kbit
FTTN VDSL: 1088 kbit - 10 mbit

The biggest problem with FTTN service, as opposed to FTTP (aka FTTH) is the upload speed limitations, as they are largely dependent on distance from the SLAM where the copper begins. With Fibre going all the way to the end of the connection at the premise, the upload speed potential is far greater. The problem is that most of the world still hasn't rolled out this kind of technology.

pppucci

Boy, Mr. Mazda, very impressive but soooo over my head. I currently have cable with (according to Speednet 75mbit down and 10 up. I have never been able to seed more than 1.4 mbit up no matter what I do. I have forwarded ports properly. My gist of your post is that is the limitation of the technology. But my question is more direct. In my torrent client, should I set uploading bandwidth to unlimited, some finite number or let utorrent automatically manage it?
BTW, I will be changing to Fios gigabit service in a few days. They claim to offer a gigabit down and a gigabit up. what setting in my client would be preferred in that situation?

Thanks in advance.

MrMazda

Given that you're on a cable based internet platform, your situation will be dramatically different.

First, we need to understand the difference between line speed and actual file size transfer. Speed is measured in bits, kilobits, megabits, gigabits, terabits, etc

File size transfer on the other hand is measured in Bytes, KiloBytes, MegaBytes, GigaBytes, TeraBytes, etc

Bits are measured as follows:

1 b = 1 b
1 kb = 1000 b
1 mb = 1000 kb
1 gb = 1000 mb
1 tb = 1000 gb

Bytes on the other hand are measured as follows:

1 B = 8 b
1 KB = 1024 B
1 MB = 1024 KB
1 GB = 1024 MB
1 TB = 1024 GB

So… 10 mbit line speed upload would be calculated as follows:

(10 mbit) x (1,000,000 b/mbit) = 10,000,000 bits
(10,000,000 bits) / (8 b/B) = 1,250,000 B
(1,250,000 B) / (1024 B/KB) = 1,220.70 KB
(1,220.70 KB) / (1024 KB/MB) = 1.19 MB

So... Seeing 1.4 MB being transferred would suggest that you're actually getting the full speed that you're supposed to. On some connections, I find that running a torrent client at more than about 85% of the line capacity can make for a very problematic connection. So... For this reason, I would suggest limiting your connection speed to about 1.1 MB/s for optimal performance.

On a Gigabit service, as long as you have Gigabit ethernet between your computer and your modem/router, your max speed should peak out as follows:

(1 gb) x (1,000,000,000 b/gb) = 1,000,000,000 b
(1,000,000,000 b) / (8 b/B) = 125,000,000 B
(125,000,000 B) / (1024 B/KB) = 122,070.31 KB
(122,070.31 KB) / (1024 KB/MB) = 119.21 MB/s

So yes... The difference will be unreal.

pppucci

Wow! Thanks for your help. I do have a gigabit router, so I should be good to go. Upload speeds like that should do wonders for my ratio!

AnkR

Yes. As MrMazda rightly said, you should try to limit the uploads to 80% of the maximum upload speed and you will be good to go. Be it a gigabit service or otherwise