Why is torrent download speed very low

If you can stream content without too much buffering, then you probably have a strong connection. Alternatively, check your wifi speed with the free Speed Test app from Google Play. This means your network is blocking torrent files, or is blocking your outgoing port. To check this, try downloading a Featured Content torrent on another network. Look at the TCP Port number, and increment it up by one. For example, if your port number is , make it To check this, delete any unfinished torrents, then close the app.

Next, reboot your phone, then uninstall and reinstall the app, then reboot your phone again. If you are not seeding, you may be anonymously identified by the swarm as a leecher. Some users reporting slowdowns after using the app for a long time are having this issue due to not seeding.

Even better, it can usually fix slowness caused by in-client protocol encryption or port forwarding issues as well which is a pain to setup manually on your router. A significant percentage of torrent users will see a speed boost after signing up for a fast VPN service.

Oh, and a VPN will make your downloads more private too, helping you hide your IP address from torrent peers. The benefits of a VPN go way beyond privacy. Many issues that cause slow torrents can be instantly fixed when you use a fast VPN provider. Slow torrents caused by: Throttling In order to throttle your torrent traffic , your Internet Provider has to be able to:.

Blocked Torrents Some Internet Providers try to block torrent traffic altogether. Comcast, for example, reportedly tried to block all upstream seeding torrent bandwidth. This header is essential, it allows data to get routed to the correct destination, and the correct software program that is looking for that time of incoming data your torrent client. These headers also make it very easy for your internet provider to filter and block torrent data packets, while allowing the rest of your data to go through unblocked.

When you use a VPN, the encryption prevents your ISP from reading these headers, making it impossible to block torrents without blocking everything.

This causes your torrent speed to drop bigtime. Port forwarding is a big pain, and you have to reconfigure it everytime your router assigns a new internal ip address to your computer Argh. Pretty sweet! For more info about each of these companies, read our guide to the fastest VPNs for torrenting.

For the rest of the issues, we can deal with them ourselves. If you have a Mbps internet connection, and you saw the Too many Torrents: Try limiting the number of active torrents and queue the rest. Anything over active torrents is overkill and will hurt overall speeds and tax your processor and hard drive. Most torrent client have an indicator of your connection health which can alert you to port forwarding or throttling issues.

The indicator is usually in the bottom right corner of the software. Vuze displays torrent health as a color-coded smiley. Green is good, yellow shows issues, red is bad. If you really want to draw doing it manually, you can follow the guides from PortForward. Most torrent clients have built-in encryption. This lite-weight obfuscation not unbreakable like a VPN is designed to fool simple throttling algorithms.

This limits your peer availability and thus your speeds. This article tackled all the most common causes of slow torrents. Plug your computer directly into your modem and see if that makes a difference. Make sure to leave any questions in the comments below and let us know how these tips worked out for you!

David started torrenting before it was cool. He enjoys hiking, strategy games and eats watermelon year round. He still rocks his Napster t-shirt once a month.