Connection dies with torrents...

CodeMaster

CodeMaster

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Hi all,
Been having problems lately with torrents (atleast I think it's torrents causing the problem).

I can be surfing for hours, but if I start downloading some torrents, then after a couple of minutes my connection just dies. I am still connected, but just get time-out errors in browsers, and torrents stall. Basically, the connections grinds to a halt. The only way I have found to restore it, is by restarting the PC.

It does this with all clients, Azureus, Bitcomet, bitlord. I don't have a clue what's potting here. This week was the first time downloading torrents since my PC's annual spring-clean (format, etc.).

Any ideas where to start?
 
Yip, with Sygate Firewall aswell, through Linksys WRT54g and ADSL.
But it did the same with Windows Firewall turned off.
 
You might need to get an update for your bit client for SP2 - just have a look on the site if there is something to download to fix conection speeds.

If there is it should fix your problem - otherwise i'll get back to you later if its still not fixed.
 
I see I am getting 4226 Event erros, could that be the problem? Do BT clients cause the connection to hang if they cannot make enough outbound TCP connections?
Maybe I should apply the patch to sort out the connection limits in SP2

<quote>TCP/IP has reached the security limit imposed on the number of concurrent TCP connect attempts.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.</quote>
 
Windows XP SP2 limits half-open connections (SYN) to a maximum of 10 (the previous limit was over 65,000). This is supposed to slow down certain viruses because their spreading strategy is to try to connect to a high amount of random IP numbers.

The drawback with this connection limit is that other legitimate network intensive applications can be slowed down as well. Applications like security network scanners, peer-to-peer (P2P) applications or a combination of network applications that a power user may be using (VPN, FTP, p2p, RDP, SSH, "Firefox on steroids" and more).
 
There are two scenarios:
1. You computer may be infected with a virus/worm that is trying to spread
2. You are a networking power users and your applications are being stalled by the XP SP2

If you have anti virus software running and you scan your computer regularl ywith anti-spyware software like AdAware then case 1 is not likely.

You can find out which process is responsible for the many half-open connections with the command 'netstat -no | find "SYN"'. Half-open connections will have a state of other than ESTABLISHED. Note the PID (process id), open Task Manager and locate the process and application responsible for the half-open connections.

The second case means that SP2 is stalling your work. An unofficial patch will modify the locked tcpip.sys and let you set the limit to whatever you wish. 50 half-open connections is a reasonable limit or you can set the limit back to 65,535 which it was before the SP2. The patch is called EventID 4226 Patcher and can be found on LVL Lord's web site.

Certain Microsoft updates may replace the TCPIP.SYS with a new locked version but LVLLord has been quick on updating the patch. When you run the patch, it will tell you how many connections are currently allowed.
 
Hey Codemaster - just for interst's sake - are you on a SAIX or IS ISP? Cause the same happened to me with Openweb ISP, on SAIX I dont have the problem? Strange?
 
I had the same problem when I was on dial-up. Never figured out what the problem was, but I think very strongly towards it being ISP related. BTW I was with Mweb
 
OK, here is the status. One torrent is still running fine, and two completed over-night. I checked 'Event Viewer' again, and it appears that I got TCP warnings (4226) at the same time as my connection died. So it does appear to be a TCP half-open problem, but since I only have one torrent running now with 3 connected seeds and 4 connected peers, it does not appear to be a problem.

@Person, I tried the netstat command in full and nothing happened, so I shortened it to 'netstat -no' and it shows 14 'Established' TCP connections with a PID of 1328. This is correct as they are for 'javaw.exe' (JAVA), which is Azureus running JAVA.
Don't think it is virus/spyware, Kaspersky AV, XoftSpy & Counterspy all run on a Friday. Some bad cookies were found but deleted.

@Hxx, at the moment I am on a TelkomInternet account, but it was doing it during the week on a WA account aswell (both SAIX).
 
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