Routers and Bittorrent

I currently have cable (Comcast) as my internet connection, and right now I'm using a Belkin wireless router - what's been happening when I've been running Transmission on OS X, and sometimes the router will lose it's connection to the internet, and it always seems to happen when there is a high amount of traffic (downloading and uploading) - I keep my torrent uploads to 20kbps, but download is unlimited (duh), and I don't run bittorrent excessively, and perhaps have 2-5 connections at once going - is it the router dropping the connection, or is it my internet connection itself? Has anyone else experienced this, and can recommend a fix? I've Googled a bit on it, but nothing conclusive yet. Any advice is appreciated.

have you got the port forwarding set up correctly?

Firmware update perhaps? What model Belkin?

  Quote

but download is unlimited

this might be a problem

"[...]it is suggested that 95% of the maximum download rate in kB/s will result in a more stable network connection."

used to get this all the time... twas a real pain. which version on transmission are you using?

I've had a similar problem with my Belkin and Roadrunner Cable. Mine usually drops the connection if my laptop has gone to sleep or hibernated and then turned back on. When the laptop goes back on it connects briefly before the router loses internet. I then have to unplug/replug the router. I never thought about it being a download thing, though it could be as I don't lose my connection until my laptop has resumed any downloads, or I open my browser (I usually make it to google or one or two pages before it drops). But its never been because of large pulls.

I've always passed it off as some kind of MAC address conflict with my modem since it limits access to one MAC address.

  On 5/17/2010 at 8:30 PM, Benedict Cumberbatch said:

have you got the port forwarding set up correctly?

According to Transmission, I do - it has a port forwarding check.

  On 5/17/2010 at 8:33 PM, goffer said:

Firmware update perhaps? What model Belkin?

F5D9231-4 - I checked that.

  On 5/17/2010 at 8:33 PM, beariksson said:

  Quote

but download is unlimited

this might be a problem

It rarely gets above 2MB/s (my internet connection averages 16MB/s) - do you think limiting it to 1MB/s or less might prevent that?

I noticed that other owners of this router (in reviews) mention that they have to reboot it once a week on average - this is what happens when I lose the internet connection from the cable modem to the router - I have to unplug it for 30 seconds, then plug it back in and it works fine.

some routers simply suck at handling many connections concurrently

  On 5/17/2010 at 8:37 PM, dr lopez said:

used to get this all the time... twas a real pain. which version on transmission are you using?

Always the current version, whenever it prompts me there is a new version.

  On 5/17/2010 at 8:37 PM, Drahken said:

I've had a similar problem with my Belkin and Roadrunner Cable. Mine usually drops the connection if my laptop has gone to sleep or hibernated and then turned back on. When the laptop goes back on it connects briefly before the router loses internet. I then have to unplug/replug the router. I never thought about it being a download thing, though it could be as I don't lose my connection until my laptop has resumed any downloads, or I open my browser (I usually make it to google or one or two pages before it drops). But its never been because of large pulls.

 

I've always passed it off as some kind of MAC address conflict with my modem since it limits access to one MAC address.

I too use MAC address filtering with no other security in place - I figure if someone's smart enough to spoof MAC addresses to try and get on my network, WPA or the like won't slow them down much either and it just cuts down on my bandwidth.

definitely something with router

maybe the internet connection is to fast for that model or it's broken or something is wrongly configured

..or maybe Comcast is disconnecting you, looking at the recent battles they have (http://torrentfreak.com/?s=Comcast) I wouldn't be surprised.

I get this all the time, it feels like DNS on the router dies whenever there's some torrenting going on. I disabled UPnP port mapping in utorrent and it seems to help a lot, you could also try disabling NAT PMP port mapping.

in my case it is definitely a router problem, sometimes i have to reset the router to get my internet back.

  On 5/17/2010 at 8:47 PM, GORDO said:

I get this all the time, it feels like DNS on the router dies whenever there's some torrenting going on. I disabled UPnP port mapping in utorrent and it seems to help a lot, you could also try disabling NAT PMP port mapping.

 

in my case it is definitely a router problem, sometimes i have to reset the router to get my internet back.

That's what I have to do - do a 'hard reboot' of the router to establish connectivity again.

If I disable UPnP, would that affect my PS3 and other devices that use the router as well?

i don't really know what it does but it alleviates the load on it somehow. maybe you'll lose some connectivity but not all.

but you can disable it on the client side (on transmission i mean) so it shouldn't affect other devices connected to the router. i think.

I had a lot of similar problems with Transmission frying the fuck out of my router setup using the default settings.

I have DL limited to 800k and number of simultaneous connections (or whatever those two settings are) set WAY low. I think the default is like 200 or something? I have mine on like 30 or 40. No probs since

Thanks; I'll try some of the suggestions made here.

I also found this:

http://broadband.mpi-sws.org/transparency/bttest.php

Finds out what your ISP is doing to certain types of internet traffic

can you ping by IP when it goes down? Next time it goes down try to ping 4.2.2.1

  On 5/17/2010 at 9:20 PM, goffer said:

can you ping by IP when it goes down? Next time it goes down try to ping 4.2.2.1

Something to try as well...

If all fails and you just want to upgrade, a really reliable/cheap solution is theD-Link 665

I have had/used about 12 different wireless routers in my high speed career and this one has been the most pleasant. It handles my 30 megabit connection without a hiccup, and I usenet/torrent quite a bit. I have had it for almost a year now and do not recall having to ever reboot it due to malfunction.

Thanks, I'll check it out!

I'd recommend buying a Linksys router and putting dd-wrt firmware on it. Been using that for a few months, seeding about 2000 torrents 24/7 and had 0 issues whatsoever. dd-wrt is also the most awesome firmware I've ever seen, you can't even compare it with default firmware of any manufacturer. Huge number of features, beautiful interface, very stable...

Here is a demo of the web interface.

http://www.dd-wrt.com/demo/

  On 5/18/2010 at 8:02 PM, Ego said:

I'd recommend buying a Linksys router and putting dd-wrt firmware on it. Been using that for a few months, seeding about 2000 torrents 24/7 and had 0 issues whatsoever. dd-wrt is also the most awesome firmware I've ever seen, you can't even compare it with default firmware of any manufacturer. Huge number of features, beautiful interface, very stable...

 

Here is a demo of the web interface.

http://www.dd-wrt.com/demo/

I've heard about that and another called Tomato (I think) - I might go that route!

I've been down the DIY firewall/router path before... it's fun in all but after a 3 years doing the Tomato, DD-WRT, PfSense, and Untangle thing I just wanted something plug and play that was reliable. I needed to use them mostly for their traffic shaping / packet priority capabilities when I had a 1.5mbps download and was sharing it with my brother. Now that I have a 30mbps connection there is no need.