Slow Downloads Through Bittorrent: Why?

Reader Mohamed Elsabrouty writes: I have DSL, and I am using the BitComet 0.59 client. The problem it is too slow (6Kbps) and it slows down browsing. Is there something wrong with the version?

For the uninitiated out there: BitComet is software used with Bittorrent, a popular peer-to-peer service. When you download torrent files, remember you aren't connecting to a big server farm with tons of bandwidth: You're connecting directly to dozens or hundreds of other users' machines, which explains a large part of your performance issue. These users could have slow connections, throttled connections, or may be completely disconnected. Bittorrent performance is highly variable, and one file may zip down while another may take an eternity.

My first suggestion would be to download the latest version of BitComet, and go ahead and use your old version of BitComet to do so. The torrent for BitComet 0.70 can be downloaded here. Check what kind of speeds you get on that download, which should have plenty of seeds. If they're reasonably high, you probably don't have a problem with your software or your connection; you're just downloading files that have few seeds or slow seeds.

If your BitComet download is slow, try it again after upgrading to 0.70. If that's still slow, try a different Bittorrent client. I've used uTorrent with success in the past. Another thing to check would be your firewall, which may be blocking Bittorrent traffic and slowing things down. You'll need to open up the appropriate ports to fix this. (Most Bittorrent software offers step-by-step advice on how to do this.)

Good luck!