If you use utorrent
You can test the shaping by reducing some compatibility settings:
Set these as a test - and write down what you had before to set back.
Options - preferences - bittorrent
all enabled except
enable udp tracker support
ask tracker for scrape information
limit local peer bandwidth
set protocol encryption to forced and untick allow legacy connections.
under limits change the values to sane values (eg 4 k per upload slot at least - lower values will reduce your download speed - so max upload should be 16k) and in
global max number of connections - set to 32
max number of connected peers per torrent - 16
max upload slots - 4 (2 if you set max upload to 8k(minimum))
under connection tab
all 4 boxes unchecked and use port 443 outgoing
- during test only download 1 torrent!
check port is manually forwarded on your router 443 to pc with utorrent
The reason for this is due to the shaping method used by ISP's. They often check ports, but beyond that then check number of connections. If they see 100 remote connection all over the world to your IP then it is highly likely that they will construe this is torrent traffic. By reducing it to a lower value (16) then it is less likely to trigger that constraint.
You also dont want to be scraping any data from torrent trackers. Remove any trackers from your torrents properties, as this scrape information is not encrypted and can be read by the ISP, weighting your "are you downloading torrents threshold" You dont need to use trackers if the torrent supports other networks (eg:dht)
Having the upload speed set too low, per torrent upload slot will reduce the speed of your download. This is due to the way the protocol sends information to other connected peers. Do not reduce your upload speed below 4k per upload slot to avoid this. Also avoid huge differences between download slots:upload slots. If you have 32 download slots then try have at least 2 upload slots and stay within this ratio (for this test at least). Also avoid anything that will get you banned by other seeders such as using fakers etc. banned information is shared accross the network, so your reputation will grow if you do this slowly over time in a negative way.
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Help I tried this and its still broken
You will need to connect to a remote location not experiencing this issue via a HTTPS proxy or a VPN and test the download speeds again. If they improve then you are being limited in a way that is not circumventable via the above methods.
Pete
PS What linux torrents are you downloading? Many Linux distros are now hosted via http as well so maybe you dont need to use the torrent protocol?
Pete
