Bittorrent And Macbook

Torrent speeds depend on how many other people are "seeding" the download. Chances are, you're picking unpopular torrents.

Also, consider what BitTorrent application you're using. I suggest you go with Azureus. While not the most Mac-like BT client, it's the best when it comes to a) communicating with trackers and b) concealing your BT traffic.

Item B is especially important because, even though you may have a 10mb/s Comcast line, chances are your ISP is shaping your BitTorrent traffic resulting in lower speeds. Using an application like Azureus (or uTorrent on XP) can greatly improve your up/down stream.

tfaz1 - you sound like you know a little about Azureus and OS X; I hope you can help me out -

I'm using 10.3.9 and Azureus 2.5.0.2. Everything has been running smoothly for months and months and months - never touched any settings, never changed port mappings, etc.

This morning I'm getting error after error from Azureus that my port is being used by something else, or that it can't bind the TCP incoming socket, etc. I've rebooted, deleted and recreated the port mappings, deleted and re-installed Azureus, to no avail. I've used Google and I've looked at the AzureusWiki, but I'm rapidly running out of hair to pull from my head.

Do you know of a good, start-from-the-beginning, step-by-step for this, and/or would you be willing to chat with me through IM or something to help me get this up and running again? My G5 just doesn't seem the same without Azureus running in the background....

The speed slow downs that you are experiencing are probably from a lot of factors. One your ISP could be limiting the port you chose to use, ie if your using anything from 6880-6899, it's probably limited in the speed. So what you need to do is change your ports, forward your firewall, and forward your router. This can all be done at portforward.com. You can also use wiki. Change your ports about once a month and be choosey with which torrents you choose to download.