Probably a Dumb Question...

[grabbi]

I'm just wondering, right, why when Im downloading something via uTorrent, at, say 500kbps d/l and 80kbps u/l, why does my connection Lag on Xbox Live?

I noticed it last night.

I was under the (probably naive) assumption, that the upload speed was around the 700kbps mark.

Basically, my thinking was that left 620kbps+ for Xbox Live, but it simply doesn't work that way.

Is it a basic principle of 1 Connection = I stream up and 1 stream down, and the router just manipulates that?

[AbyssUnderground]

If you are saturating your upload bandwidth then you have none left for xbox live to communicate. You might have spare download bandwidth but you need upload bandwidth as well.

[ceedee]

Further to AbyssUnderground's post, if you limit uTorrent's "Global maximum upload rate" to roughly 80% of what your connection is capable of achieving, then you should not notice any lag in your Xbox Live performance (except when completely maxing your connection).

You can set that upload rate in uTorrent by selecting Options/Preferences/Connection and entering a figure in kB/s in the lower half of the page.

[AmAtoL]

Same here grabbi, although it is with the PC connection. If there is any downloading going on/uploading going on then it knackers the connection totally. Last night a torrent was uploading at about 80 kb/s which is a fraction of the 20 meg upload of say 700. No matter, it makes browsing impossible and anything else a joke. Why is this ? Why does any sort of uploading completely boll** the connection ?

And why is this happening at 11 at night ?

Thu, 3 Apr 2008 22:30:45 UTC

Test 1: 1024K took 5500 ms = 186.2 KB/sec, approx 1534 Kbps, 1.5 Mbps
Test 2: 1024K took 3110 ms = 329.3 KB/sec, approx 2713 Kbps, 2.65 Mbps
Test 3: 1024K took 3093 ms = 331.1 KB/sec, approx 2728 Kbps, 2.66 Mbps
Test 4: 2048K took 5125 ms = 399.6 KB/sec, approx 3293 Kbps, 3.22 Mbps

Overall Average Speed = approx 2567 Kbps, 2.51 Mbps

Gaming has been a joke tonight.

[chickendippers]

The same thing happens on my 8Mb ADSL connection at university. If a housemate is torrenting it affects my browsing speed even if they're not using the full bandwidth allocation.

[Druchii]

Originally Posted by grabbi

I'm just wondering, right, why when Im downloading something via uTorrent, at, say 500kbps d/l and 80kbps u/l, why does my connection Lag on Xbox Live?

I noticed it last night.

I was under the (probably naive) assumption, that the upload speed was around the 700kbps mark.

Basically, my thinking was that left 620kbps+ for Xbox Live, but it simply doesn't work that way.

Is it a basic principle of 1 Connection = I stream up and 1 stream down, and the router just manipulates that?

You do not have 700kBps, you have 700kbps, well 768. This is equal to a maximum of 768 / 8 = 96kBps.

I think this is all about the difference between bits and Bytes.

[Rob]

Whatever you have using your bandwidth has to have an impact on whatever you are doing. P2P software will be a killer. In terms of affecting pings, which are vital for gaming, consider not only the upload and download bandwidth, but also the number of connections being maintained by the P2P software. Simply put each of those connections which includes attempted connections that fail both in and out, will have a big overhead, not only on your internet, but also your router and computer networking capacity.

[grabbi]

Originally Posted by Druchii

You do not have 700kBps, you have 700kbps, well 768. This is equal to a maximum of 768 / 8 = 96kBps.

I think this is all about the difference between bits and Bytes.

Thats just confused me more!

I didnt say I had 700kBps! I did say I had 700kbps!

---------- Post added at 01:00 ---------- Previous post was at 00:58 ----------

Originally Posted by Rob

Whatever you have using your bandwidth has to have an impact on whatever you are doing. P2P software will be a killer. In terms of affecting pings, which are vital for gaming, consider not only the upload and download bandwidth, but also the number of connections being maintained by the P2P software. Simply put each of those connections which includes attempted connections that fail both in and out, will have a big overhead, not only on your internet, but also your router and computer networking capacity.

Right.

So what Ceedee said. Would that make things any more bearable for both Xbox and PC? Or is it a simple case of, I should do them both at sperate times, instead of at the same time?

[ceedee]

Originally Posted by AmAtoL

Same here grabbi, although it is with the PC connection. If there is any downloading going on/uploading going on then it knackers the connection totally. Last night a torrent was uploading at about 80 kb/s which is a fraction of the 20 meg upload of say 700. No matter, it makes browsing impossible and anything else a joke. Why is this ? Why does any sort of uploading completely boll** the connection ?

If you're using XP, I'd recommend you patch your "max half-open TCP connections" -- sounds like nonsense, I know. But it's the first tip in TorrentFreak article: "Optimize Your BitTorrent Download Speed"

[AmAtoL]

Originally Posted by Rob

Whatever you have using your bandwidth has to have an impact on whatever you are doing. P2P software will be a killer. In terms of affecting pings, which are vital for gaming, consider not only the upload and download bandwidth, but also the number of connections being maintained by the P2P software. Simply put each of those connections which includes attempted connections that fail both in and out, will have a big overhead, not only on your internet, but also your router and computer networking capacity.

Yeah I appreciate that Rob, but I would never even try to play online while a torrent was in progress, that is impossible. Even another PC doing gaming and another just browsing I can tell the difference straight away. Look up and you can see how dire the speed was last night, it was less than 1 a minute before that snapshot.

to ceedee
Thanks but I don't really use the old P2P and when I do it is fine just out of the box. My issue is that it kills the internet when in operation, and nowhere near maxed out, it's not really an issue as such more an observation

[ceedee]

Originally Posted by AmAtoL

to ceedee
Thanks but I don't really use the old P2P and when I do it is fine just out of the box. My issue is that it kills the internet when in operation, and nowhere near maxed out, it's not really an issue as such more an observation

Yes, I understand that mate.
I suspect that whenever you do anything (eg. gaming or P2P) that requires multiple connections, XP is slowing down your browsing (or anything else you do online) because it's currently only capable of opening so many connections at once.
The default for XP SP2 is set to 10 -- most P2P gods recommend 50-100.

[AmAtoL]

I had a look at that ceedee, and followed to the linked article by David Kaspar relating to the Event Viewer record 4226. I had 20 instances of the event, 3 while I would have been gaming at night, and several (6) when the PC was off :p
I'm figuring that the patch would be largely wasted for gaming as the event viewer confirmed. As I game every night the differences are apparent from night to night, or sometimes just poor for days.
No matter what, I am still putting my eggs in the poor VM network basket.

[ceedee]

Originally Posted by AmAtoL

I had a look at that ceedee, and followed to the linked article by David Kaspar relating to the Event Viewer record 4226. I had 20 instances of the event, 3 while I would have been gaming at night, and several (6) when the PC was off :p

ROFL
"I even get a lousy connection when my pc is turned off..."

I'm figuring that the patch would be largely wasted for gaming as the event viewer confirmed. As I game every night the differences are apparent from night to night, or sometimes just poor for days.
No matter what, I am still putting my eggs in the poor VM network basket.

Fair enough.
I'm still in fits of giggles about recorded events when your pc was off...

[AmAtoL]

Originally Posted by ceedee

Fair enough.
I'm still in fits of giggles about recorded events when your pc was off...

Heh, that's what I thought, hence the smiley

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Tcpip
Event Category: None
Event ID: 4226
Date: 09/03/2008
Time: 00:35:12
User: N/A
Computer: TED
Description:
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.

Nevertheless it detected something at 00:35:12 on the 9th and the comp was definitely off ,