Why Opening A Torrent Client Suddenly Slows Down My Browsing?

[prophetomega]

I had variety of torrent client. Yesterday I notice that my internet became slow. After lots of trial and error I finally figure out what caused it. And it's my torrent client. Simply opening them (even if their is no download or seeding) Sometimes I can't open a page or the page takes forever to load. I don't know what happen. I did not install anything new for the past 2 weeks so it's very weird. The only events I remember is piratey bay along with some public trackers going down, and I don't think it's even connected. Can someone please help me. I want everything back to normal so that even even if I'm downloading or just leaving my torrent client open. My browsing isn't affected. I had run my antivirus and anti malwares too, and no detection.

 

[CodeGeek]

Just not to get it wrong: You open the torrent client, but it doesn't download and doesn't seed? Means there are no connections? Or are there connections, but it doesn't show any active torrents?
Because open connections can be a problem if you're router isn't capable of managing them. Normally it does NAT, because you only have one IP address in the Internet, but several within your own network. And some routers can manage only a few. If you open to many connections over such a router it will make your Internet surfing slow or you even get timed-out connections in your browser.

 

[prophetomega]

No. If I open a torrent client my internet will become slow and I can't browse normally. Pages will take alot of time to load and sometimes they won't. Even if my torrent is not downloading or seeding and even if there are no files on my torrent client. My internet will slow down. So I had to exit my client (torrent) that way I could surf normally.

 

[CodeGeek]

If you're having Windows 7 please open the task manager. Then go on the tab "Performance" (I guess it's named like that). There open the "Resourcesmonitor...". Switch there to the "Network" tab. After 2 or 3 seconds you should see a graph "TCP-Connections". How many are there (approximately)? If the torrent client doesn't anything and you don't have open any network related programs (web browser, dropbox, etc.) it should be almost 0 or a little bit more.

 

[prophetomega]

Thanks for all your response. I had checked the TCP and this is the result.
Nothing open - close to zero around (look like 2 to me)
Browser open - a quick spike to 10 then back to 2
Surf to akiba - Quick spike to 50 then down to 4
open torrent - quick spike to 20 then down to 4
Then I start surfing again with torrent client open. Instead of a quick spike it slowly rise from 4-10 then from 10-15, 15-20 until it reach 50 and it took like 2 mins to get to 50 then when it reach 50 it stayed their from like another 2 mins until the webpage I'm visiting (akiba) finished loading. The moment I close torrent everything is loading quickly again.

 

[CodeGeek]

Hm, that's interesting. 50 isn't very much and shouldn't be a problem. At least if you're not living in a student dorm and 1000 other people using the same router. But if you use your router alone and only with that one computer it shouldn't be a problem at all.
Do you have another computer (e.g. a notebook) you can also test that? It would be interesting if this is really a network a problem or a problem on your computer. Maybe it is the result of some settings or some software installed on it. E.g. if you have installed more than one security software (e.g. 2 antivirus programs or 2 firewall services) it can cause problems because they will "battle" with each other.

 

[prophetomega]

Now that you mention the antivirus I realize that they are the only ones that keep updating everyday. So it's possible that they cause it. Back to TCP I think it's more likely that torrent is slowing down my surfing experience since instead of having a sudden spike from 4-50 it went from 4-10, 10-15, 15-20 until it reaches 50. I also notice that without torrent and opening variety of website I can reach 300 quickly and pages loading smoothly too.

 

[Ceewan]

It might be because you are running everything through a VPN (if you are then use their help desk).

Not sure you posted this in the right section, could be you should have posted this in the P2P Discussion section.

No matter, it could also be a question of bandwidth, as your bittorrent client will take up bandwidth logging onto the DHT network and so forth. It slows my download speed as well but does not affect my browsing speed. Maybe you should switch to utorrent as some torrent clients actually are more memory hogs. Also, the longer your torrent client is running the more memory it will use, I tend to reboot every so often (24-48 hours if I am using it that long) just to clear the cache.

As far as solutions: don't use TCP trackers...at all. Use UDP trackers only, it will cut down on any ISP throttling and lower your bandwidth.

You left out some important details, like the browser and bittorrent client you are using.

 

[CodeGeek]

VPN is a good point - if you're using one.

About the DHT thing: That should also be visible in the resources-monitor of Windows. There should be no or almost none bandwidth usage as well as not many connections if you only open the torrent client, but don't have any files to seed or to leech.

 

[prophetomega]

Thanks guys.

It might be because you are running everything through a VPN (if you are then use their help desk).

Actually I'm not using any VPN. I don't have one yet.

.Maybe you should switch to utorrent as some torrent clients

The source of the problem is utorrent and bittorrent. However just awhile ago I figure out a client that works fine Vuze. I don't like the interface but this will do for now.

You left out some important details, like the browser and bittorrent client you are using.

For browser firefox and chrome and for torrent client, bittorrent, utorrent, and some download manager with bit torrent supports.

About the DHT thing: That should also be visible in the resources-monitor of Windows. There should be no or almost none bandwidth usage as well as not many connections if you only open the torrent client, but don't have any files to seed or to leech.

I can't find it. Maybe because I don't have anything on torrent

 

[Elldallan]

Another thing you might check, in the reseource monitor check disk activity and whether that spikes or not.
If you have utorrent set to transfer finished files to somewhere else(another disk etc) that might be causing the disk/write queue to be overloaded, utorrent will usually "disk overloaded" in the status bar.
If that's the problem the issue should go away after you let utorrent finish the move action.

This can appear as slow browsing or a slow computer in general since loading homepages will typically mean writing to browser cache and if the disk is overloaded that action will be queued and the webpage won't be loaded until it gets disk write time.

Another issue I guess it could technically be is that utorrent is verifying the integrity of incomplete torrents if utorrent was shut down forcefully the last time.
This will consume processing power and on slower computers it can cause things to appear sluggish, this will also be visible in the resource monitor under the processor tab.

If you prefer utorrent over Vuuze, try uninstalling and reinstalling utorrent(if you're using the version that installs that is).

 

[armnboi]

1 Hard disk - 2 - Memory 3 - YOur ISP and Your Router - Max performance

 

[prophetomega]

Thanks for all the response. I finally able to find out the real issue and... It's my stupid ISP they did something to censor torrent clients.

 

[Ceewan]

Thanks for all the response. I finally able to find out the real issue and... It's my stupid ISP they did something to censor torrent clients.

Sounds like "throttling". It is possible to get around some types of throttling, it depends on what sytem they are using.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/is-your-internet-provider-throttling-bittorrent-traffic-find-out/

http://help.utorrent.com/customer/portal/articles/163493-client-features

Protocol Encryption (PE) is a joint specification between Azureus and BitTorrent. It is designed to bypass throttling and/or blocking of BitTorrent traffic by an ISP.