Do I need a new wireless router?

[suryad]

So I am an avid anime watcher and I torrent them. Till last year that was no problem. But this year, the problem is that I cannot sustain my torrent speeds for longer than say 5-10 minutes. I had left for Cali for my vacation over Christmas, came back after New Years, fired up the torrent and after 5 minutes of torrenting boom internet connection lost.

My ISP is Comcast. My machine is connected via wireless. Fire up torrents, it downloads like it used to and then after 5-10 min my internet connection literally drops. I see the machine is still connected to the wireless router, but I cannot hit the internet, nor can I do anything. Only solution is to either restart the wireless router or sometimes disabling and re-enabling the wireless adapter through Network Connections help.

I guess my problem is 2 fold. Comcast as ISP or a busted wireless router that is unable to serve too many bits.

I read that Comcast put in a new scheme to find a user using up too much bandwidth and reprioritizing packets or whatever, so that person does not slow everybody else's experience down which I am ok with. And they also imposed a 250 gb limit which I am nowhere near coming close to. I probably use 10 gb max a month.

What do you guys think? Should I swing by Fry's grab a new badass wireless router and try it out? If the same problem still exists, then I think its the ISP. I have a sneaky suspicion it is the router, because when one machine is not able to connect to the internet, if I try to use a laptop and try to connect to the wireless router, nothing happens, as if the wireless router just disappears....argh its rather annoying!

Thanks in advance for anyone who posts

 

[Scott_Arm]

I'm assuming your modem is separate? If I were you, I'd connect the laptop directly to the modem and try torrenting to see if you get the same problem before spending any money.

 

[the maddman]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/pos...-year-with-new-network-management-system.html

I'd try the "bypass the router" trick just to be sure, but Comcast is extremely anti-bittorrent. Good luck!

 

[suryad]

Thanks guys yes my modem is separate. I will try what you suggested.

I read that arstechnica writeup before hence my concern. Problem is I dont know of any other ISPs out here in Atlanta. And i live in a house I am renting with a few other roommates and neither of them download or surf the internet much. My house in California I got SBC Yahoo DSL and they simply rock. And also one of my roommates was a big pirater of stuff and uhh theres something of him being blacklisted by the FBI lol so yeah haha oh well...I really hate Comcast.

 

[suryad]

Did some experimenting last night and I hope this helps others who face the same situation, and everything is working if I go ahead and cap the download bandwidth to a specified rate instead of leaving utorrent and its default settings. So I have it at a meager 100kb/s and no drops. I am gonna go back home and try to bump it to say 150 or 200 kb/s and see if it is fine then as well...basically try to find the sweet spot. I guess the good news is Comcast's P2P detection/throttling works! lol

 

[homerdog]

Sounds like a Comcast issue, but if you do need a new router, LINKSYS WRT54GL + Tomato is a winning combination.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Suryad - Up speed is usually more where the problem is on torrenting. Try throttling your upload to no more than 75% of your max upload and you could really see a difference. (I never got good torrent speeds until I figured out about throttling my up a bit)

Also, do you have your ports forwarded correctly? In uTorrent you go to "Options" - "Speed Guide" and hit the "Test if port is forwarded correctly" button. It helps.

Comcast recently stopped torrent throttling due to some court challenges, they recently changed the policy to an all over throttling when the bandwidth got crowded. (I'll have to hunt up the link, happened in the last few weeks.)

And finally, a friend gave me a bricked Linksys WRT54G v4 last week which I successfully brought back to life and flashed with ww-drt and it's an incredible difference! Not so much in my torrent speeds, but on how my torrenting shares bandwidth with the rest of the family. Before my son would scream at me whenever I was torrenting for fucking up his gaming ping, now I can torrent to me hearts content without slowing down everyone else in the house.

Hope that helps, if I can help further let me know...sharing is caring.

 

[suryad]

Suryad - Up speed is usually more where the problem is on torrenting. Try throttling your upload to no more than 75% of your max upload and you could really see a difference. (I never got good torrent speeds until I figured out about throttling my up a bit)

Also, do you have your ports forwarded correctly? In uTorrent you go to "Options" - "Speed Guide" and hit the "Test if port is forwarded correctly" button. It helps.

Comcast recently stopped torrent throttling due to some court challenges, they recently changed the policy to an all over throttling when the bandwidth got crowded. (I'll have to hunt up the link, happened in the last few weeks.)

And finally, a friend gave me a bricked Linksys WRT54G v4 last week which I successfully brought back to life and flashed with ww-drt and it's an incredible difference! Not so much in my torrent speeds, but on how my torrenting shares bandwidth with the rest of the family. Before my son would scream at me whenever I was torrenting for fucking up his gaming ping, now I can torrent to me hearts content without slowing down everyone else in the house.

Hope that helps, if I can help further let me know...sharing is caring.

Hehe thanks a ton digi! I do have my ports forwarded correctly. I get that green check mark button at the bottom indicating all is good. I have my upload rate currently capped to 50 kb/sec. I think we have a 12 mbps Comcast cable line, so the upload is quite high and I doubt I am anywhere near that upload limit. So I think that checks out as well.

And as for the router I would love to change it but as it so happens this house I am living in, I have roommates and the wireless router is one of my roommates and he likes to have control over it. So I cant just buy a router and replace it. I have always been partial to Linksys myself but this one we have currently is a generic Netgear. And I dont know whether it is the wireless router or not, but when I play Battlefield 2 sometimes with my brother, the ping is horrendous and I get kicked from the servers which pisses me off to no end.

As for Comcast throttling I am 100% convinced that policy is still in effect right now and they are using the excuse of the bandwidth being crowded. I highly doubt that and they can probably get by without any problems, because I dont think I can challenge them and say 'yo prove I am hogging up your bandwidth'. One would think a 300 kb/sec download and a 50 kb/sec upload for a torrent should be acceptable on a 12 mbps cable connection without eating up some poor sucker's bandwidth. And I am quite sure the neighborhood where I am living in ALpharetta, doubt the neighbors do anything more other than checking their email!

 

[digitalwanderer]

If it's a Netgear WGR614 your buddy has you might want to limit your connections, I just upgraded from that one. It has a limit of like 200 simultaneous connections and then it hoses, a bit of a fatal flaw. I found that if I kept my connections under 150 through uTorrent it REALLY helped. No matter how fat your pipe, if the router limits your connections it's another bottleneck.

Also I have Comcast too and I've been torrenting pretty consistently at about 750Kb/s down 120Kb/s up, no throttling that I can tell.

 

[suryad]

If it's a Netgear WGR614 your buddy has you might want to limit your connections, I just upgraded from that one. It has a limit of like 200 simultaneous connections and then it hoses, a bit of a fatal flaw. I found that if I kept my connections under 150 through uTorrent it REALLY helped. No matter how fat your pipe, if the router limits your connections it's another bottleneck.

Also I have Comcast too and I've been torrenting pretty consistently at about 750Kb/s down 120Kb/s up, no throttling that I can tell.

Spot on digi, I think my uTorrent settings are set mostly to the default. I will try dropping the 200 simultaneous connections and I will post back with my findings I am not going to be too greedy if that still doesnt work and I am stuck at 100 - 200 kb/sec at least I am able to download! But yeah downloading at 1 MB/sec usually is a lot more prefereable! Thanks once again digi. I will try out what you suggested as soon as I get home!

 

[digitalwanderer]

I kept 175 connections total when I had the Netgear, once I set it to that I quit hogging up the bandwidth from everyone else so much...but it limits the speed of torrents if you have a lot at once. I usually only do 1-3 at a time. (Although I do have me crazy anime junkets where I load up 23 before I go to bed. )

 

[suryad]

I kept 175 connections total when I had the Netgear, once I set it to that I quit hogging up the bandwidth from everyone else so much...but it limits the speed of torrents if you have a lot at once. I usually only do 1-3 at a time. (Although I do have me crazy anime junkets where I load up 23 before I go to bed. )

LOL I do 1-3 as well. But when Thora does batch releases I am all over it! But 23 is something I have not even remotely come close to approaching!!!

 

[digitalwanderer]

It's not as impressive as it seems, only 5 are active at a time. When one finishes downloading it'll pause and let another download, etc.

 

[suryad]

It's not as impressive as it seems, only 5 are active at a time. When one finishes downloading it'll pause and let another download, etc.

Ah I gotcha. But I gotta say thanks for your advice mate. It definitely sorted my issue out. I have the connections restricted to 150 and I the download to 200 kb/sec. I am gonna try and see if 300 kb/sec is achievable without crapping the wireless router out. I guess the problem is lying within the router? I am a bit amazed at that considering I have been torrenting for a year and it never happened before. But thanks once again digi.

 

[RudeCurve]

Sounds like Hentai addiction...

 

[suryad]

Sounds like Hentai addiction...

haha no hentai here...mech action definitely tho!