MacBook Pro BitTorrent really slows down entire network

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Level 1

10 points

MacBook Pro BitTorrent really slows down entire network

My mac book pro slows down my entire home network if I try to download something with Azureus bitTorrent client. everything else seems to be fine until I open up Azureus. Then my entire home LAN slows down to the point where there is no bandwith at all. if I'm downloading 30kbps an my macbook pro with azureus, then even a small 2mb download on my mac mini takes upto 20 minutes, and even web pages take FOREVER to load. But as soon as I close Azureus everything is fine. and Azureus on my PowerBook G4 is fine. It downloads the same files at about x10 the speed of my macBook Pro and doesn't clog up the entire network. I only noticed it after I installed the intel macbook pro firmware update. But I'm not certain that the firmware update has anything to do with the problem since I only had to MBP for about a week before I did the update, and I don't think I was really trying to download anything before that.

Azureus is a Java app so I don't think it needs to be universal binary. Has anyone else experienced something similar to this (having bitTorrent or any one program kill you network)?

MacBook Pro 2.16, Mac OS X (10.4.6), PowerBook 1.5 G4, Mac Mini core duo

Posted on Apr 14, 2006 12:19 PM

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Answer 1

JasonFear

Level 5

4,965 points

Apr 14, 2006 2:15 PM in response to ammonkc

World of Warcraft does that to my home network, as did Limewire. It hogged up the majority of my lowly DSL bandwidth.

Considering how many packets were being sent across the IP ranges used by these two applications, it didn't surprise me at all. Simple solution... close the app and then suddenly my bandwidth went back to normal.

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Answer 2

ammonkc Author

Level 1

10 points

Apr 14, 2006 2:22 PM in response to ammonkc

Yeah, except it wasn't pulling very many packets at all. I was only getting really slow 20-30kbps. I got a broadband cable connection and I normally download at 150+kbps without my network feeling a hit at all. and if I download the same torrent files on my PowerBook G4, I get much faster speed and the network doesn't clogg the LAN at all. It has to be something about the way the intel macbook runs the bittorrent client.

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Answer 3

mcowger

Level 2

420 points

Apr 14, 2006 2:26 PM in response to ammonkc

Is it possible that you haven't rate limited your upload speed with Azureas? If you don't limit to to less than 70% or so of your availble UPSTREAM BW, TCP ACK packets can't get through, which will seriously slow everything else down.

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Answer 4

ant184

Level 1

15 points

Apr 14, 2006 3:47 PM in response to ammonkc

I have exactly the same problem. weird. I have tried throttling bit torrent but no difference. It doesnt always do this but happens frequently enough to be annoying. Never happened with my other machines.

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Answer 5

Tim Haigh

Level 7

24,198 points

Apr 14, 2006 5:43 PM in response to ammonkc

More often than not a slow bandwidth problem when p2p apps are in use is due to not enough room in your upload bandwidth for ACK data to get through.

If for example your have a 256k upload speed and your torrent is using 32k up then all your incoming bandwidth will be slowed down considerably across your entire network.

To get around this problem you need to either get a router that supports Quality of Service and then you can set rules to give ACK data a priority. Or you can lower your global upload rate in your azureus preferences.

for 256k upload you need to allow about 4k for ack data so your torrent should be set to a max upload of 20k.

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