[Freeflyer]

Hi,

Recently when using bittorrent or mldonkey, my internet connection slows to a crawl. The download speeds for donkey or bittorrent are generally low 10-15kbs, so it's not using the whole dsl pipe, but I still see a huge reduction in my available browsing speed.

If I close the download program that's open, it goes back to normal, which suggests there's something a bit odd going on.

Can anyone suggest how I go about looking into this further. My download machine is a G4 450, which is my server and connected directly to my router, and my main browsing machine is a Tibook via airport.

Thanks,

J.

[Drakino]

Two possibilities:

1. The upload that these programs are doing is maxing out your connection. Any internet connection will slow to a craw if either the downstream, or upstream is flooded. The reason that a maxed out upstream slows down the downstream is due to the acknoledement packets not getting through to the server you are downloading from. If those packets don't egt through, the server waits for them before sending more data. (When using TCP. UDP, doesn't care, but runs a much higher risk of data loss.)

2. The client is talking to so many different computers, there is enough traffic to flood your downstream. The client only shows what it is downloading at, it does not show the overhead of maintainining conenctions to other clients. In many cases this can be quite high in these decentralized networks.

[Freeflyer]

Ah, very interesting. I didn't know about that. Is there a (relatively) easy way to monitor this sort of thing. The up and downloads shown are low, so I'd love to be able to see what else is going on. At the moment I'm just having to leave the programs running overnight when I don't need the bandwidth.

J.

[RevEvs]

Yeah, these programs will max out your upload, which will kill your connection. If possible you need to set them so they can only upload at say 70 - 80% of your max upload.

revs

[Freeflyer]

My upload is supposedly 750kbs on DSL, but in the mldonkey upload window I was only seeing maybe 10kbs upload.

That's what's been puzzling me, what am I missing that's not showing on the upload status. If my upload is being maxed out, then there is a huge amount of data being sent that I don't know about, and that doesn't appear to be part of what's allowed.

I have my firewall fairly well closed and the program is only allowed to share the files that are in the share folder, which is the stuff that I've downloaded.

Any further insight much appreciated.

Cheers,

J.

[dtriska]

750 Kbps equals roughly 94 KBps. The upload speed you're seeing is probably 10 KBps, but that shouldn't be the problem, even with the various packet overheads.

So, your surfing on the TiBook is slowing down? And, your AirPort connection goes through the PowerMac? It might be worth checking out the processor load on the PowerMac, as maybe the computer isn't giving priority to the AirPort connection, or something like that.

[RevEvs]

Ah didnt read that it was via airport. From my experience mldonkey etc do not play nice with airport. Have you tried them on the G4 450, see if they have the same effect?


revs

[Freeflyer]

My bad, I don't think I explained my setup very well. The airport doesn't go through the powermac. I have a dsl router that plugs into a netgear 4 port wireless router. The G4 is connected by ethernet cable to the wireless router and the Tibook is via airport to the wireless router, so the G4 shouldn't have any effect on the airport.

The slowdown in browsing is the same on the G4 as the Tibook, so I think it's more to do with the throughput of the wireless router or the dsl router.

mldonkey is running on the G4, and I'm browsing on the Tibook. I run mldonkey on the G4 so that it could just tick away slowly in the closet, downloading for as long as it needs, without me interrupting it by working on the Tibook, or taking it out of the house.

Hope that straightens up my network setup.

J.

[RevEvs]

I just think its down to mldonkey not playing well with routers. I had this problem. Setting the max connections quite low helps, but in general it does tend to kill routers.

revs

[car1son]

You can improve Bittorent's operation behind a router by configuring the router to forward incoming connection requests on the BT ports (6881-6889) to teh Mac running BT. (more info)

(I don't know donkey, but if it provides file sharing services for others, and if you know what ports it uses, it should similarly benefit.)

[Freeflyer]

I have all the correct ports forwarded to the G4, so I guess this is something that I just have to put up with.

Hopefully someone will continue working on the donkey client to improve this over time. Thanks for your help.

J.

[eevyl]

The mldonkey and bittorrent networks throw so much garbage to networks it's insane.

No wonder that using both bring your network speed to its knees. Also it can make your Airport and/or dsl router to crash, requiring a reboot of one/both of them.

Well, those seems to be the instant bad karma about using those kind of networks, so it seems