Bit Torrent, latency issues.

[Jesse]

If your laptop had the same connection issue as your DFI LP UT nF4 rig how can you suspect the RAID on your DFI rig? Does your laptop have a RAID array as well?!?

 

You weren't listening. I was connected remotely to the DESKTOP PC over the LAN and not WIRELESS. The connection TO the DESKTOP was lost for a moment, and then would resume shortly after. While it was down, the harddisks stopped spinning.

[Jesse]

Not having your setup in front of me it is hard to know if this is an issue, but capping your upload and download speeds in a BitTorrent client (whichever one you use) does not put a cap on the BANDWIDTH being used. In addition to bandwidth being used to actually transfer data files, your connection is also being used to maintain connection with other peers, connect to the tracker to get a new peer list, connect up to new peers, etc. If you are maintaining connections to a large number of peers and or trying to make more connections, this will take up lots of bandwidth as well. You can put limits on the number of connections your client would keep. I would suggest lowering those figures until you are able to IM and browse the internet as you would like to. Of course, the less connections you have, the lower download speeds you might get due to less peers connected...but that's just the way it goes. I have run into the same problem. Hope this helps.

 

Yes I have done that. The default settings on the client were like 10 connections per torrent, and 100 total. I was losing connection with this alone. And it happens just with any torrent connection really. But as I said numerous times, I've connected to the same trackers using the same client and the same build of XP on my other comp, and never had this issue.

[Jesse]

mr_dimsum:

 

I will give that a shot and report back. As of now, I turned my comp on before going to work and now it won't let me connect to it

 

As for the router -- it is a lynksys network anywhere, and I've not had any problems with it previously. And as I mentioned, the other computers on my network still have connectivity. However, it has crashed before and I did have to power it off, and back on. So you could be onto something. It just boggles my mind seeing as this has never happened before, even on other comps running the same programs, and nearly identical settings.

 

Perhaps when I get home I'll try a raw connection from my modem, and see if the issue persists so I can at least eliminate that problem altogether.

 

Will also try the connectivity settings to see if it fixes anything, though I don't think it will seeing as I run the same default settings on other computers and don't get the issue.

 

Regardless, thanks to everyone who took the time to respond, its appreciated. I'm crossing my fingers that we get it figured out.

[mr_dimsum]

jesse, most of your symptoms sound like common bit torrent issues. the router jamming is a very common issue with bit torrent, and other file sharing applications. way back than, my router had no issues either (referring to my version 3.0 befsr41), however, it all the sudden gave me issues. i took me a while to figure it out until finally gave up on opted to purchase a new one.. in which i no longer disconnect as often.. having to reset the modem and router is also a common system of a hardware issue (referring to modem and router issues).

 

if you are on sp2 as well.. i'd check out the website link i provided below. windows sp2 really limits your tcp connections.. apparently this was done for 'security' issues, but regardless, even if it is, we do know it hinders peformance with bt, etc., which is why it's good to have an application to manually adjust open tcp connections such as bitcomet.

[Smoken Joe]

mr_dimsum:

 

I will give that a shot and report back. As of now, I turned my comp on before going to work and now it won't let me connect to it

 

As for the router -- it is a lynksys network anywhere, and I've not had any problems with it previously. And as I mentioned, the other computers on my network still have connectivity. However, it has crashed before and I did have to power it off, and back on. So you could be onto something. It just boggles my mind seeing as this has never happened before, even on other comps running the same programs, and nearly identical settings.

 

Perhaps when I get home I'll try a raw connection from my modem, and see if the issue persists so I can at least eliminate that problem altogether.

 

Will also try the connectivity settings to see if it fixes anything, though I don't think it will seeing as I run the same default settings on other computers and don't get the issue.

 

Regardless, thanks to everyone who took the time to respond, its appreciated. I'm crossing my fingers that we get it figured out.

 

 

 

Good luck man you might also want to try a diffrent version of the program. You can really limit the number of connections and continue to get good downloads. Dont forget that routers like anything cn go bad over time too.

[Jesse]

Okay unfortunately the half connection thing didn't solve the problem. I set it to 100, reboot, and as soon as my torrent started running for a new popular release, my internet connections are timing out.

 

So when I get home I will try without my router, and see what happens.

 

edit: Router firmware upgraded, issue persists.

[Jesse]

Hooked up directly from the modem to my NIC, and the problem remained.

 

Kinda eliminates a bunch of possible problems, but just makes it harder to pin-point. Grrr.

 

I tried flashing my bios, but had a problem and had to redo it all. Is there any specific bios I should be using for my setup? A recommended one at least?

 

Also, what slots should my ram be in? The orange, or yellow? I had them in yellow and they worked. I originally had one in the top orange and top yellow, and noticed it wasn't running in dual channel mode, so I went to both yellows.

[sjw985]

Advice from a DFI n00b below...

 

Have you tried opening up ports 6881-6889 in the router and/or XP firewall (persistent port forwarding)?

 

Also, after a new build/fresh SP2 install for some reason my XP kept installing two firewire networking devices that were somehow messing with my NF4 networking controller connection. It worked but was acting "weird" (non-technical n00b expression). I had to disable the firewire networking devices in device manager before that was resolved.

 

After doing the aforementioned patch, disabling the firewire networking devices, and forwarding 6881-6889 all of a sudden my BT bit rates launched to the moon. Not sure which of the three made the difference, but I'm happy now.

[tom_johnson]

I know how frustrating these problems can be, i had a very similar issue when i was running a netgear modem, it could just about sustain 12-15 connections without a random crash every day or 2, raise the connections up a bit and the modem would crash as often as every half an hour, existing connections would still work but no more could be made, this was due to the connection table on the modem filling up, as it had a very small amount of memory allocated to it. When it seems to cut out can u even access the firmware configuration on the modem?

 

Many isp's do limit bandwidth in one way or another but it should not effect ur connectivity. Wats the state of your line? do u use dsl or cable? wats the SNR? can have a huge effect on connection stability

 

Also i have found that optimising MTU, TTL and rcvwindow sizes can improve speed and stability, this will be different depending on your connection tho. have a look here http://www.speedguide.net/analyzer.php

 

Just a few ideas, no guarantees. can't say much about arrays as i havent spent much time with them

[Jesse]

Like I've been saying - I am pretty sure this is a software issue or a driver issue. Aside from those things, nothing I am doing is changing. If I do all the same stuff on my laptop, I won't run into any issues whatsoever.

 

The following below is the analized stuff from the site:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MTU = 1500

MTU is fully optimized for broadband.

MSS = 1460

Maximum useful data in each packet = 1460, which equals MSS.

Default Receive Window (RWIN) = 65535

RWIN Scaling (RFC1323) = 0 bits

Unscaled Receive Window = 65535

 

Note: Under Windows 9x, if you have RWIN set to any other value, and the Analyzer reports 65535 you might need to install the MS Vtcp386 fix.

For optimum performance, consider changing RWIN to a multiple of MSS.

Other values for RWIN that might work well with your current MTU/MSS:

513920 (MSS x 44 * scale factor of 8)

256960 (MSS x 44 * scale factor of 4)

128480 (MSS x 44 * scale factor of 2)

64240 (MSS x 44)

bandwidth * delay product (Note this is not a speed test):

 

Your RcvWindow limits you to: 2621.4 kbps (327.675 KBytes/s) @ 200ms

Your RcvWindow limits you to: 1048.56 kbps (131.07 KBytes/s) @ 500ms

MTU Discovery (RFC1191) = OFF

Time to live left = 113 hops

 

TTL value is ok.

Timestamps (RFC1323) = OFF

Selective Acknowledgements (RFC2018) = ON

IP type of service field (RFC1349) = 00100000 (32)

 

Precedence (priority) = 001 (priority)

Delay = 0 (normal delay)

Throughput = 0 (normal throughput)

Reliability = 0 (normal reliability)

Cost = 0 (normal cost)

Check bit = 0 (correct, 8th checking bit must be zero)

 

DiffServ (RFC 2474) = CS1 001000 (8) - class 1 (RFC 2474). Similar forwarding behavior to the ToS Precedence field.

[tom_johnson]

I see why u think its software or driver based, most of the info the tcp analyzer shows are specific to your pc, not your network.

 

The only thing that stands out to me is the MTU Discovery is off, this is on by default with xp and can have benefits when sending/recieving large pieces of data, there is a lot to read up on about this, and i havent got a great knowledge of it but i know it is on by default. You could try enabling it

 

Hive: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

Key: SystemCurrentControlSetServicesVxDMSTCP

Name: PMTUDiscovery

Type: REG_DWORD

Value: 1 enabled = default

[Jesse]

VgaSave

ViaIde

VolSnap

VSS

 

are all that are under

SystemCurrentControlSetServices

 

no VxD