Why does uploading on Bittorrent slow my Comcast internet connection?
An extremely common problem. As you approach the limits of your upload speeds (which are quite likely limited at around that rate) it gets harder to download, because even when downloading, you must upload some information (for example, acknowledgements that you received pieces of data). Also, interactivity goes to crap because ISP’s usually use very long network queues. This is fine for throughput but bad for interactivity. You can limit your upload rates to something below the maximum your connection has and this will help. If you are running linux or perhaps osX you can probably run some kind of traffic shaper. Whether there is such a thing for windows or not, I do not know. Some bit torrent clients will allow you to set an overall max upload speed. The basic client only allows a per-torrent max rate.
I wouldn’t be surprised in bit torrent is using 50% more than the noted amount when you take into account miscellaneous communication. Interestingly, Netlimiter shows about the same level of outgoing traffic as bittorrent, and I would assume that Netlimiter doesn’t distinguish between actual data and ack’s and whatnot. The convention is to write “kbps” for kilobits per second, and “K/s” for kilobtyes. Thanks, I thought the difference was just capital K for kilobytes and lower case k for kilobits. Well, now that I know that my internet connection probably isn’t broken after all, Netlimiter solved the practical aspect of the problem. So thanks! I will admit, though, that this upload limit seems remarkably stingy to me. Maybe I should move to Canada.
For windows, you can use Netlimiter to limit your upload speed on a per-program or per-IP basis. As RustyBrooks said, this is a very common problem. If your cable can only support 13 kbps upload (Which seems low to me — mine can support 80-90kbps or so, but I don’t know what internet access is like in the US), then you’ll want to cap your uploads somewhere between 7 and 10 kbps.
