Bit torrent and Xbox Live......

[_dan_]

I've got 2Mb broadband with Plus.net. It's the premier account, so there's no traffic shaping, no download capping, and it's 30:1 contention instead of 50:1. All this considered I'd have thought I'd be able to cope with 2 or 3 connections at the same time and be able to serve them all pretty well.

My question is, should I still get a decent Xbox Live connection if one of the 2 PC's connected are downloading via bit torrent?? Cause at the moment Xbox looks like it's running through a 28k modem until I stop the downloading!! Is there any tweaks I can do to even it out?? Maybe reduce the connection limit within Azureus or something?

I realise that bit torrent takes alot out of a connection as it basically connects to about a hundred other people at a time!!

I'm using Azureus at the BT client, and I've a Netgear DG834G router.

Cheers chaps, Dan :)

[deckster]

Cap the upload rate - that's the killer. It can easily saturate the connection even if it's not downloading that quickly (or if you're seeding). On 2Mb ADSL you should be on 512kb upload so set it to max 30kB/s and it will all become much more usable.

[slinky]

deckster said:

On 2Mb ADSL you should be on 512kb upload

Unlikely, all of Plusnet's residential connections are 256kb upstream...

There aren't a great deal of ISP's that I know of that provide greater upstream speed on "standard" accounts..

slinky

[deckster]

slinky said:

Unlikely, all of Plusnet's residential connections are 256kb upstream... There aren't a great deal of ISP's that I know of that provide greater upstream speed on "standard" accounts.. slinky

Really? That makes me feel better about the crappy NTL upload speed then

Best limit upload to 20kB/s then - but the principle's still sound.

[slinky]

NTL/Cable tend to have a slightly different profile to standard ADSL...

Like I say, most providers in the UK will hold upstream at 256k, I know of some that will allow it to go higher, but that is largely for business accounts (as far as I understand it).. obviously there are some that do provide higher upload speeds..

I was in contact with an ISP recently inquiring about bonding ADSL... F**K me it's expensive, £2.5k in hardware required at both the client and datacentre end (both paid for by the customer) and each "box" can cope with 4 lines...

Maybe we'll just get a load balancing router, said my boss..

slinky

[malman]

slinky said:

NTL/Cable tend to have a slightly different profile to standard ADSL... Like I say, most providers in the UK will hold upstream at 256k, I know of some that will allow it to go higher, but that is largely for business accounts (as far as I understand it).. obviously there are some that do provide higher upload speeds.. I was in contact with an ISP recently inquiring about bonding ADSL... F**K me it's expensive, £2.5k in hardware required at both the client and datacentre end (both paid for by the customer) and each "box" can cope with 4 lines... Maybe we'll just get a load balancing router, said my boss.. slinky

There's an ISP doing bonded without special hardware at the ISP end and you can use a linux box with a couple of PCI adsl cards at your end. We have a bonded line but we got it before the other stuff was available and it uses £800-1000 of kit at each end

[si_j]

If you want a decent ping when playing games online - its simple turn off all downloads! Any gamer worth their salt will tell you this and if possible stop others in your household leeching your valuable game bandwith

[slinky]

malman said:

There's an ISP doing bonded without special hardware at the ISP end and you can use a linux box with a couple of PCI adsl cards at your end. We have a bonded line but we got it before the other stuff was available and it uses £800-1000 of kit at each end

Is that bonded or load balanced? I had a chat with one of our suppliers whilst we were looking into this and what you describe sounds load balancing...

slinky

[malman]

slinky said:

malman said: There's an ISP doing bonded without special hardware at the ISP end and you can use a linux box with a couple of PCI adsl cards at your end. We have a bonded line but we got it before the other stuff was available and it uses £800-1000 of kit at each end Is that bonded or load balanced? I had a chat with one of our suppliers whilst we were looking into this and what you describe sounds load balancing... slinky

Bonded using MLPPP to link the sessions (up to 4 I think) Its just that the gateway kit they use at the ISP supports MLPPP already so you don't need to host any kit their end, you just need to be able to do it your end. Some guy has produced a linux boot cd that will run on standard PC hardware using 2 type of ADSL kit

Or you can put some cisco kit on the end of it.

http://broadband.nildram.net/display.php?page=bonded

www.freestuffjunction.co.uk/bondedcd.shtml

Haven't used this yet as ours uses hosted kit with tunnels between to bond the individual links to one ip range

>> Edited by malman on Monday 15th August 21:05

[slinky]

Interesting stuff, cheers for that...

Just a shame I did my investigations a month ago and I'm not in a position to change my recommendations

Ahh well,

Bookmarked tho!

slinky

[malman]

Yeah I was a bit gutted when I found it after I needed it. Would have saved a fair amount of cash that would now be going into our other link to make it sdsl. Still working on that, trying to convince the boss of the ROI