Can someone explain to me why Transmission is a bandwidth hog?
 

If I'm downloading something in Transmission my internet connection slows down to .31 MBPS. However, as soon as Transmission stops, it goes back up to where it's supposed to be - 25 MBPS. Transmission never downloads more than 2 MBPS, and the uploading is below 50 KBPS.

The same happens with Ktorrent and any bittorrent client I use in Linux. Any distro, also.

What could be causing this issue? Could it be my router? It's a Netgear Wireless N 300 router.

I'm currently using Linux Mint 13 Maya with Cinnamon.

I use Deluge, not Transmission. But I too am connected to the internet through a wireless router. To begin with, I had "maximum connections" in Deluge's network settings at 200, the default. And the wireless router would just drop out every ten minutes. But I now have "maximum connections" at just 20, and the wireless router seems to handle it, no problems.

I haven't read about it in any bittorrent tutorial, but some wireless routers can't handle a lot of connections... certainly less than 200. This limit is sometimes listed in specifications as "maximum simultaneous connections". So you might try lowering the max connections in Transmission...

Or this could be entirely unrelated, and the problem is elsewhere. Have you done port-forwarding on your router? Have you opened up a port on your distros firewall? An open port is needed for Transmission, elsewise the bittorrent protocol doesn't work properly.

Yes, I use UPnP to open up the port and Transmission has incoming permissions in my firewall. I lowered the max connections from 60 to 10. I will let you know how it goes.

Ok, this is not resolved. I've got it set to 10 max connections and it's still slowing the entire network down.

I'm going to give Deluge a shot with the max connections lowered.

Is your ISP doing something?

Deluge does the same thing. I disabled IPV6 and it improved a little, but only a little.

No, I don't *think* so. Let me test with the Windows computer and see if it slows down with it.

I can't even get the torrent to go that fast on Windows. And I know it's a torrent with a lot of peers. That's part of the reason why I hate Windows - the networking is so slow. *sigh*

It doesn't make sense to me. But perhaps we can rule out what it isn't.

If your uPnP, port forwarding or firewall are not setup correctly, then that might slow down your bittorrent. But I can't see it slowing down your entire internet connection. That said, you can double-check your port is correctly open here...

But perhaps your wireless router is playing up. Although you have reduced you max connections to nout. But to double-check, you can login to your routers setup as admin, and then look at its log. Most routers provide a log for errors, so you can dbl-check for any problems there.

But beyond that, given that you've tried multiple bittorrent clients on multiple distros... if the port is open and your wireless router log is error-free, then I surmise that the error might be with your ISP.

Does you ISP have support forums? Has anyone else there complained of their connection being throttled with bittorrent? It does happen.

My Transmission port was showing up as closed, so I port-forwarded it. It's open now.

I also selected "force encryption" in the preferences for Transmission. I found an article from 2011 that confirmed my ISP is not throttling Bittorrent traffic, but I figured I was better safe than sorry. Another article from 2007 said they were, and suggested protocol encryption as a solution.

I can't test the connection right now, but I will test it soon. I will let you know how it goes. Thank you once again for all the help!

Traffic is still being slowed down by the Bittorrent traffic. :(

But we still haven't pinpointed a cause. Mere conjecture at best.

Is there any way you can plug your Linux box into a different router, on a different internet connection. One which is known to play well with torrenting. Take your laptop for a walk. Cos if you can do that, and your system torrents there okay with no problems, then you can confirm that the problem actually lies with your specific router and/or ISP, and not with any particular settings for your torrent client and/or distro.

As regarding your port-forwarding... I guess uPnP didn't work for you. Apparently, some ports need to be open on your distros firewall for uPnP to work. I believe they are 2869/tcp and 1900/udp. And uPnP needs to be enabled in your routers setup too, which most do by default.

Also, I'm not sure what port number you have opened for your bittorrent. But I think bittorrent is officially supposed to use ports between 6881 and 6891. And thus, some ISPs now know to selectively throttle traffic that uses those ports. So perhaps don't use those official port numbers, and pick a much higher number instead.

I can but it may take me a while.

UPnP is enabled on my router. I didn't know I needed to enable certain ports in my firewall for UPnP to work, though. Either way the problem has been remedied by port-forwarding.

It uses 51413.