I have an odd problem: Whenever I use torrents of any kind my connection (on the same and on other computers on the network) goes pretty much completely dead. This happens despite the bandwidth the torrent is using – sometimes even about 0bps, in which case I still have to close azureus for my connect to work again.

I can only imagine the cause is the router (but not sure what would cause it), or the ISP (comcast messing with my connection when it detects torrent protocols). Even after azureus is closed the network connection is exceedingly slow until it somehow recovers (not sure why, and I haven't had the time to rule out stuff). Any ideas? Thanks.

P.S. Due to comcast's association with illegal traffic shaping and the perceived weirdness of all of this – I suspect those corporate rats.

P.P.S. I realize this isn't linux specific; sorry I don't really post on other tech forums.

It would be good if you could test the torrents in your local area network while it's cut off from the internet - so it would be just you. If you can, try running a torrent server and "downloading" something trough torrent off another machine, and see if it still causes trouble. If yes, then it's something in your own network, but if no, then it's probably caused by something outside your network - I could well imagine it's your ISP.

They advertise here too that any file sharing traffic detected causes the connection to be scaled down to a dialup speed (otherwise it's at least 10Mbps) for some time, and if the use continues, the time is extended. Sort of like punishing; they know, and admit, that legal data is transferred too - like Linux setup disc images, for example - but according to them the amount of illegal data transferred is so big that it's their only chance or something. On the other hand that feels like they're just trying to cure a disease after it took on, but not care about where it came (and comes again), thus making it all for no good; on the other hand I understand it's one of the rare ways to actually spare bandwith for the non file transfer things.