To make uTorrent faster, you'll need to check on things like seeder numbers, wi-fi interference, your current version, and your speed and priority settings. If things still seem slow, consider force-starting the torrent, as well. UTorrent is the most popular desktop torrent downloading client as we all know. After installation, the uTorrent runs in an optimized mode to get best downloading speeds. The uTorrent runs in a set of incoming and outgoing connection settings to reach the highest possible download speeds.
Is your torrent download speed slow and you want to speed it up? Here, we have written a comprehensive guide that covers different aspects of torrent downloading.
Using torrent clients is one of the most popular ways to share the files over the web. There are many popular torrent sites as well. While there are just minimal basic settings needed to run these clients, there are some tweaks for more advanced users.
How to make BitTorrent download faster in simple steps?
To increase the torrent download speed, you can always find plenty of good ways online. In this article, we are trying to provide you all those methods and tips at a single place. Take a look:
1. Install a Lightweight Torrent Client
To increase the torrent downloading speed, the very first step you need to follow is to install a lightweight torrent client. Although, BitTorrent is one of the most popular torrent clients around, but it comes with lots of bloated apps and other features. So, I prefer uTorrent most for a hassle-free and faster torrent downloading. You can also install qBittorrent since it’s another lightweight torrent client.
The reason for using a lightweight torrent client is that it only focuses on downloading torrents and speeds up the transfer rate. uTorret and qBittorrent are available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
You can also refer our list of best torrent clients for Mac, Windows, and Android.
2. Choose a Healthy Torrent
For choosing a healthy torrent, first, you need to understand the concept of seeder and leecher. These two terms always confuse the new torrent enthusiast, so, here I will try to clear your doubts in simple language. A seeder is one who has the complete copy of the file shared across the network which you intend to download. However, a leecher is one who does not have the complete copy of file and has joined the network to download the file. Once a leecher downloads the file completely, he/she will become a seeder.
For a high torrent download speed, the number of seeders should be higher than the number of leechers. The more is the number of seeders, the healthier your torrent will be. So, while choosing a torrent, make sure that the seeder-leecher ratio is high.
Also Read: What Are Torrents? How Torrent Works? — BitTorrenting 101
3. Add an Exception to Windows Firewall
Windows firewall can block your torrent client or you can say your incoming BitTorrent connections. So, adding an exception to Windows firewall will be a good option to boost torrent downloading speed. First, navigate to Options> Preferences> Connections, now check Add Windows Firewall exception and then click Apply.
(Check Enable UPnP port mapping in case it’s unchecked).
Warning: Do not shut down Windows Firewall permanently as it leaves your PC open to attack.
4. Change General Settings to Optimize uTorrent
To increase the speed of your torrent, make sure all the three option that are shown in the figure below are checked. To find these options, navigate to Options> Preferences> General then check Append .!ud to incomplete files and Pre-allocate all files. Usually, the third option is already checked but if it’s not, check that too.
5. Limit Your Global Upload and Download Rate
You can also speed up your torrent downloading on clients like qBitTorrent, BitTorrent, uTorrent, etc., by limiting the upload and download rate. But first, you should understand the fact that torrents breathe the uploading done by users. So, turning it completely off, or setting it as 1kB/s, would not be a wise option. But, at the same time, you don’t want your upload rate to set it as the maximum (‘0’ stands for unlimited) as it can choke down your own connection.
Setting upload rate to about 70-80% of your maximum upload speed would be a great option. Whereas, you can keep the download rate 0, as it is considered as maximum. To configure these options navigate to Proprties> Bandwidth, then set the Global Upload Rate Limit as 80% your max upload.
Also Read: How To Use uTorrent Web To Download And Stream Torrents In Your Browser?
6. Change the Number of Connections
Once you’ve set the upload/download rate, you can now change the number of connections to avoid any overload. Although, if you do hit and trial with the settings you might get a better result. But, for those who aren’t very much sure, I can suggest you some rough numbers which might increase torrent downloading speed.
Navigate to properties> Bandwidth, then set Global maximum number of connections to 150 and the maximum number of connected peer per torrent to 100. Leave the upload slot as it is.
7. Add More Trackers
Trackers are a good way to optimize the torrent download speed. Adding new and faster trackers to your existing torrents can increase the download speed by adding new seeds and peers to your connection. The method of adding trackers to your torrent is not so complicated as you only have to add these links to your existing trackers. While pasting the new tracker, make sure that you are not erasing the existing ones (and do not worry about duplication).
To add new trackers, first right click on the torrent you are downloading and then select Properties. Under the General tab, you will find the trackers list. Scroll to the bottom and paste trackers from the list given below.
Here is the list of trackers:
In case you want more trackers, here is the complete torrent tracker list.
Did you find the article on how to increase torrent download speed useful? Or, do you know any other methods to speed up the torrent downloading? Let us know in comments below.
Some torrent users commonly experience slow download speeds, and a number of factors could contribute to that problem. One possibly overlooked reason has to do with the ports on which the P2P traffic is operating.
Since a particular BitTorrent port has to be open on both the router and the firewall to facilitate incoming as well as outgoing traffic, users who have both of these might not be using the correct settings to get the most out of their downloads.
The issue is having a firewall that's blocking incoming BitTorrent connections that are needed to share files. Given the load-balancing and swarming nature of BitTorrent, clients unable to take incoming requests for uploads are usually allowed less bandwidth for downloads.
What Is the Best Port for Torrenting?
A torrent client sets up a network resource called a port that allows other BitTorrent clients to connect to it. Each port possesses a unique number called the TCP port number. The client normally associates the 6881 port.
However, if this port is busy for some reason, it will instead try successively higher ports (6882, 6883, and so on, up to 6999). In order for outside BitTorrent clients to reach the client, they have to be able to traverse your network through the port that the client is using.
The router and the firewall both determine whether or not this action is possible since both can be set to open and block ports. For instance, if the client has assigned port 6883 for uploading data but the firewall or router, or both, is blocking that port, traffic can't move through it in order to share torrent data.
How to Speed Up BitTorrent Clients
Most firewall programs let you choose which ports can be open and closed. Similarly, you can set up port forwarding on a router so that it will accept the traffic through the designated port and then forward those requests to the computer that's running the torrent client.
For BitTorrent, many home users set up port forwarding on the TCP range 6881–6889. These ports must be directed to the computer running the BitTorrent client. If more than one computer on the network might run BitTorrent, a different range like 6890–6899 or 6990–6999 can be used for each. Remember that BitTorrent uses ports in the 6881–6999 range only.
The router, firewall software, and torrent client all have to agree on the port that's used for BitTorrent traffic. In other words, even if the router and client software are configured to use the same port, the firewall could still be blocking it and preventing traffic.
Other Factors That Slow Down Torrenting
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Some ISPs throttle or even completely block P2P traffic. If your ISP does this, you might consider using an online torrent client like Put.io so that the traffic is seen as regular HTTP traffic, not BitTorrent.
Another way to stop your ISP from blocking P2P traffic is to access the internet through a VPN service that supports torrents.
Your physical or wireless connection might be the problem. If you're downloading torrents from a wireless computer, consider using a wired connection or sitting in a room just next to the wireless router to mitigate any signal degradation.
Low available bandwidth on the network is another possible reason for torrents to upload or download slowly. A limited amount of data can be uploaded and downloaded at any given time, and when the limit is reached, every device using the network experiences slow speeds. The only way around this problem is for other devices to stop using the network, or for the network to be upgraded to support more bandwidth.
Along those same lines, another tip to download torrents faster is to download only one torrent at a time. When you run several torrent downloads simultaneously, each torrent effectively downloads more slowly than if they were running individually.
Prioritizing torrents is one way to keep all your downloads running but keep one at the top of the list so that the client reserves enough computer power to download that one first. Most torrent programs support this feature.
If the torrent you're downloading has too little a number of seeders, then there aren't enough sources from which to download the file. Look for the torrent elsewhere with more seeders, or wait for more users to upload the file so that you can download it.
A computer that's slow overall, and therefore also slow at downloading torrents, might be infected with malware or might need some of its running programs shut down to free up system resources.