Slow torrent files - what settings on the mac firewall software?

As long as your Mac opens the connection (which is the case with a torrent client), you do not need to open anything on its firewall.
You would allow specific ports open at the firewall level if you wanted your Mac accept requests from the outside, like FTP access for uploads.
As far as the slowness of your torrent files download is concerned, it has probably nothing to do with Mac OS X firewall because a firewall cannot slow a flow, it can stop it or let it through. It is probably the other end that does not have enough bandwidth.

who's your internet provider?
if it's rogers in canada that may be the problem.

let me know.
thanks,
j

Keith,

I'm behind a firewall/NAT, can I use BitTorrent?
Yes, but you will get better performance if other peers can connect to you.

Here is everything you need to know about ports to open with firewalls when dealing with bit torrent protocol based p2p applications. Here in even more detail of why and how you will get poor/slow p2p performance behind a firewall, if you need it.

If you use the default port numbers you do not have to change the client software as they use these ports as "well known" for the bit torrent protocol. This makes it easy for the ISPs to monitor network traffic based on the port numbers and build lists of overall percentages of traffic in their systems that are bit torrent based and who is using them. If you want to gain a tiny bit more security you can pick a random high number port such as 46712 and open that in the firewall for incoming tcpip traffic but you will then have to configure the same number in your client software's preferences.

j Deschamps,

I am on Rogers and have experienced a drastic drop in torrent performance over the last couple weeks.

Why did you make the Rogers comment? Did they make changes to their network?

jpa777