How to Speed up your uTorrent downloads

If you want to download anything from P2P networks, the best torrent client to use is uTorrent. It's heavy on features, and light on size, and its free.

Use the right port
This is a very a very important one. Using the right port number can increase the number of PCs that can connect to you, and thus speed up downloads. It's best to choose a port in the range- 49152-65535.
In uTorrent, go to Options -> Preferences -> Connection and enter in number from the above range, and save your changes.

To check if the port is forwarded properly, go to Options -> Speed Guide and click on the button “Test if port is forwarded properly”.

This will launch the uTorrent port checker webpage that will tell you if the port is open or not.

If the port is forwarded properly, then fine, but if it's not, then you need to do these:-

1. Open the Windows firewall from the control panel, and uncheck the "Don't allow exceptions". You don't have to bother about this if you don't use Windows' firewall. Or if you use a third party firewall, make sure that uTorrent is allowed proper net access.

2. Configure the router to forward the port automatically. There are many tutorials that deal with port forwarding on the net (and this forum itself) so search for them.

Set the proper upload limit

To find out the right number for this, visit Speedtest.net and conduct a speed test. Make sure that there are no applications running in the background which are connecting to the net. Conduct the test a few times and take the average upload speed. Click here and enter the value you got. Change the value in the drop down box to "kilobits". Click on calculate. In the table that appears below, note the value next to "Kilobytes". Multiply this value by 0.8 and you have your magic number. In uTorrent, go to Preferences -> Connection and enter in the new number for the Maximum Upload rate. Leave your download rate at “0? (maximum). Ok my personal experience is that set this upload limit to 15 kbps for Home 500 connection.

Change the bittorrent settings

In Options -> Preferences -> BitTorrent you’ll need to make some recommended modifications. Change the settings to make the dialog box look like this.

Enable encryption

In Options -> Preferences -> Advanced you’ll need to make a few adjustments, as well. Scroll down to where it says “net.max_halfopen” and change this from 8 to 50. (If you’re on a dialup Internet connection, don’t do this). Now, scroll up to “bt.connect_speed” and change the value from 20 to 50. Last, go to “diskio.flush_files” and be sure this is set to true. Click Apply and OK to save the changes.

After making these changes, you'll need to restart uTorrent. You'll notice that the speeds have increased substantially (unless you've done some of these tweaks before).

On my BSNL Home 500 connection (256 kbps- 2mbps), I am getting speeds up to 250 kbps and max up to 280 kbps. I can't get speeds above this because of my connection limit.
One byte is made of 8 bits. So when I am getting a speed of 250 kbps it is 250,000 x 8 = 2 Mbps which is the max my connection allows.