Someone was asking how I am able to get such good download speeds. While most of it is because the internet is Korea is the fastest in the world, here is a guide that will help anyone improve thier torrent downloads…

Bit-Torrent is an incredible technology that allows transfer of large files without putting much strain on the original server. This is acheived by utilizing the upload bandwidth of all those that are downloading, which is relatively unused normally. This removes the strain off of the servers and distributes it over a large network of peers.

In this guide, I will show you how to tweak your Bit-Torrent client so that you can acheive the fastest speed possible. This guide is designed for Windows XP SP2, but some of the tweaks can be used in other versions of Windows.

Requirements:
Azureus - This is the Bit-Torrent client of choice.
LvlLord’s TCP/IP patcher - This is to remove the limitation of the number of outgoing connections allowed by Service Pack 2

Lets get started.

The first thing that you must do is make sure that if you are behind a firewall or a router, to open port 6881 for listening. This is required to obtain the maximum speed possible. We wont go into doing this here, but a quick search on google should show you how to do this.

The second thing to do is to use LVlLord’s patcher. Unzip the files and execute the patcher. A dos prompt window should pop up and you will be given some options. If you type in “Y” and press enter, it will change the maximum outgoing connections to 50. This should be enough for most users, so go ahead and do that. If, however, you make the limit higher, you can press “C” and enter in the number of connections that you would like.

After you enter in your choice, a window may popup asking you to insert your Windows XP CD. Press the cancel button, as you want the files to remain changed. Then reboot your computer.

Next, start up Azuerus and navigate to File > Options. In the resulting tab, change the following settings as shown.

Note: If you changed the maximum outgoing connections to a number greater than 50, enter in that number instead.

The next tweak depends on the type of internet connection that you have.

For the global upload speed, the optimal number for that is about 80%-90% of your internet connection’s MAXIMUM upload speed. My maximum is approximatly 40 KBPS. That is why I set my global maximum as 35 KBPS. For the next setting, you want it set so that you have allocated a MIMIMUM of 3 KBPS per upload slot. I set mine so that each person gets a better speed than the bare minimum of 3 KBPS.

The next two settings should always be 0 and are not dependent on your connection speed.

Finally, some ISPs throttle bandwidth on P2P ports, so it would be a good idea to change the port used for Azureus. To do this, go to tools>Nat/Firewall test. Type in a port, anything goes, I used 43,029. Make sure it doesnt go above 60,000. Click apply and then you’re done!

Now for some results.

Before these tweaks, I recieved around 100 kbps on this particular torrent. As you can see, after the tweaks i’m getting about 256 KBPS. If you look at the average speed for the swarm, I am nearly 5 times that.