P2P (Bittorrent etc) configuration & use discussion...ongoing (Only place to post!)

subfreq

My hunch having read this thread, and I do believe they are doing some shaping, is that they have to be doing something in the firmware on the router.

It's the only way they could dynamically regulate your service at the user level.

madmoe

What model router do they supply you with?

Tea_Bag

subfreq wrote: »

My hunch having read this thread, and I do believe they are doing some shaping, is that they have to be doing something in the firmware on the router.

It's the only way they could dynamically regulate your service at the user level.

my thoughts exactly.

Ive been saying UPC arent traffic shaping on this thread openly for a while now, but now im not so sure. these new bricks they are sending out are completely locked up and full of bugs.



will confirm when i get hold of a router.

sharkman

madmoe wrote: »

What model router do they supply you with?

Cisco EPC2425

Tea_Bag

madmoe wrote: »

What model router do they supply you with?

Cisco EPC2425

Boot Revision 2.1.7lR3

Software Revision epc2425-E10-5-v202r12812-090709cs_upc
Firmware Name epc2425-E10-5-v202r12812-090709cs_upc.bin

madmoe

It is easy to update the firmware on them? Would that get rid of any crap NTL have pre-loaded onto them?

vibe666

madmoe wrote: »

It is easy to update the firmware on them? Would that get rid of any crap NTL have pre-loaded onto them?

unfortunately not, they are very different from dsl modem/routers.

you can't update the firmware on them yourself, any firmware updates have to be pushed from the ISP.

the best you can hope for is get a router that is compatible with a good 3rd party firmware like tomato or dd-wrt and just turn everything off on the cisco and bridge it to your new router.

it might not solve all your problems, but it's a good start.

you can't even swap out the cisco yourself, you need an engineer to do it and that would have to be with the old scientific atlanta modem, assuming he even still has one.

madmoe

I think I have the old scientific Atlanta modem at home......dunno if I could swap it out after on my own though....

vibe666

madmoe wrote: »

I think I have the old scientific Atlanta modem at home......dunno if I could swap it out after on my own though....

you can't swap one for another, even two identical ones wouldn't both work.

your specific modem has it's mac address tied to your account and/or (can't remember which) line and has to be activated from someone in UPC that an engineer rings when he sets it up.

without that crucial step, it's just a brick unfortunately.

sharkman

Finally got mine sorted too(for the moment) rang 1550 924 124 and spoke to Alex , at last someone who knows what they are talking about .

madmoe

What did u say to him?

conzy

Have the same issue with 20Mb UPC Broadband, I get maybe 150kB/s max and then web browsing grinds to a halt and I get timeouts etc...

There is no way around this?

How Soon Is Now

Lately i have been gettin decent enough speeds for torrents either at night or during day.

Just yesterday downloaded a fair bit and was gettin more then 450kB/s on certain torrents.

vibe666

if your web browsing is grinding to a halt after x amount of time torrenting, it's a pretty sure sign that your router isn't able to handle the hundreds of connections your torrent client is trying to make.

if you aren't using a router that is able to take a 3rd party firmware that would have better TCP connection tracking management features like DD-WRT or Tomato and your router does not support changing the TCP Conntrack value from it's default, then you'll need to get hold of another router that can.

if you have a look at the DD-WRT forums you'll be able to find a list of supported hardware and see if your particular router is capable of running it.

if you're not willing to spend any money to fix the problem then have a look throuh the thread and see about limiting the number of connections yor torrent client is allowed to make and also look at limiting the amount of upload and download bandwidth you give it (which will be in the settings of the torrent client itself) too to try and alleviate the probem, although don't expect miracles.

Tea_Bag

called UPC and they said that they're not shipping or will replace my Cisco with the old netgear router and scieA modems. they advised me to call their (expensive) advanced call centre place to play with the setting on the Cisco.

anyone know where to get a cheap Linksys WRT54Gx router that supports DD-WRT? ive been scouring adverts.ie but not having much luck..

vibe666 wrote: »

the TCP Conntrack value from it's default, then you'll need to get hold of another router that can.

is that the MTU Size? its set as "default" on the Cisco, what do you reckon it should be at?

he man rugger

Hi, is there any idiot's step by step guide for setting up a torrent client with eircom someone could link me to? I had it all running perfectly but then got my computer ghosted to get rid of a nasty virus and now I'm getting speeds of 5kb/sec on a 3MB line. Thanks

_Whimsical_

he man rugger wrote: »

Hi, is there any idiot's step by step guide for setting up a torrent client with eircom someone could link me to? I had it all running perfectly but then got my computer ghosted to get rid of a nasty virus and now I'm getting speeds of 5kb/sec on a 3MB line. Thanks

There are quite alot of guides on www.youtube.com that are helpful and very easy to follow. I used this one and it helped:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqd3l-oREGo&feature=related

If you haven't already got your port forwarded you should do that.This guide works for the Netopia 3347 and the software version that Eircom seem to run on the Netopia 2247 http://portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwarding/Netopia/3347NWG/Utorrent.htm

Tea_Bag

Tea_Bag wrote: »

called UPC and they said that they're not shipping or will replace my Cisco with the old netgear router and scieA modems. they advised me to call their (expensive) advanced call centre place to play with the setting on the Cisco.

anyone know where to get a cheap Linksys WRT54Gx router that supports DD-WRT? ive been scouring adverts.ie but not having much luck.

Here ya go: http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=314078

eoinf

vibe666 wrote: »

if your web browsing is grinding to a halt after x amount of time torrenting, it's a pretty sure sign that your router isn't able to handle the hundreds of connections your torrent client is trying to make.

if you aren't using a router that is able to take a 3rd party firmware that would have better TCP connection tracking management features like DD-WRT or Tomato and your router does not support changing the TCP Conntrack value from it's default, then you'll need to get hold of another router that can.

if you have a look at the DD-WRT forums you'll be able to find a list of supported hardware and see if your particular router is capable of running it.

if you're not willing to spend any money to fix the problem then have a look throuh the thread and see about limiting the number of connections yor torrent client is allowed to make and also look at limiting the amount of upload and download bandwidth you give it (which will be in the settings of the torrent client itself) too to try and alleviate the probem, although don't expect miracles.

What you described sounds like my problem. I have the stock UPC router (and paid €50 for it).

so if you would be so kind as to let me know which the best (and easiest to flash) router is i would appreciate it.

Cheers

EF

eoinf

eoinf wrote: »

What you described sounds like my problem. I have the stock UPC router (and paid €50 for it).

so if you would be so kind as to let me know which the best (and easiest to flash) router is i would appreciate it.

Cheers

EF

Here ya go: http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=314078

Tea_Bag

david7536 wrote: »

Here ya go: http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=314078

thanks.

i was really hoping to get a second hand one or something for €30ish, because they're hardly going to break down or anything so second hand = new.

do u know how much shipping would cost to limerick?

vibe666

ebay is awash with the wrt54g series routers too, you vould get one cheapish on there.

the problem is that only the GL is flashable with dd-wrt or other firmwares out of the box, te others usually require some messing with to get them to take a non-linksys firmware and *SOME* won't ake a 3rd party firmware at all due to linksys messing with the hardware inside the at some point during their lifetime.

there's more info on the 15 odd different models available of the wrt54g and which ones are and aren't compatible with other firmwares HERE on it's wikipedia page.

if you want to spend some more money to get something better, you can get one or two routers now with wireless N and gb ethernet that run dd-wrt. the linksys wrt610n is one that springs to mind, although i know the firmware is still in beta testing and is not complete, it still works.

madmoe

Excuse my ignorance but what is dd-wrt??

Also, I though someone on here said that if you want to use anything bar the free router NTL give you you need to call out the engineer to do some stuff with it also?

Cheers,
M

conzy

Speeds seem to have picked up a bit with torrents on UPC...



1.2MB/s :O

3gigs in 40 minutes

madmoe

Good to see. I'm getting my NTL 10MB installed today...will be interesting to see how it is.....

conzymaher

conzymaher wrote: »

Speeds seem to have picked up a bit with torrents on UPC...



1.2MB/s :O

3gigs in 40 minutes

Id say that the speed is 100% to do with your router not suffering from NAT overload as a result of reletively few open tcp connections and has nothing to do with bandwidth available on your upc line.

vibe666

madmoe wrote: »

Excuse my ignorance but what is dd-wrt??

it's a 3rd party firmware for some models of router.

basically, the software that makes the router work can be overwritten with a custom firmware that allows you to do a lot more with it and for it to be more stable, reliable and faster, particularly if you use things like bittorrent that uses hundreds of connections. dd-wrt is one such firmware project, but thereare othrs like tomato, openwrt and more, each with their own features and pros/cons.

madmoe wrote: »

Also, I though someone on here said that if you want to use anything bar the free router NTL give you you need to call out the engineer to do some stuff with it also?

no, not the router, just if you want to replace the modem.

if you have the all in one cisco device that upc are using recently, you can set it up so that it is basically just a modem and have it pass everything straight to your own router.

as previously mentioned earlier in the thread, for it to work with UPC it will ned to be labelled as either a "broadband" (which will work with DSL or Cable modems) or just a "cable" router. a regular dsl router will not work with a UPC connection.

vibe666

conzymaher wrote: »

Speeds seem to have picked up a bit with torrents on UPC...



1.2MB/s :O

3gigs in 40 minutes

that's what happens when you have it all set up right on a well seeded torrent.

madmoe

Thanx for explaining that Vibe :-)

vibe666

madmoe wrote: »

Thanx for explaining that Vibe :-)

np, glad to help.

i remember when i first started torrenting (many years ago) trying to figure out why my connection kept going titsup.

i got a linksys wrt54g to try and help out and it was better than the one that i had gotten from BT but still kept crapping out regularly until i discovered 3rd party firmwares.

back then you used to have to short out pins on the circuit board when you powered it on to get the thing to a point where you could re-flash it, but things have moved on quite a bit since then and for the most part it's a relatively simple process.

i've spent ages tweaking settings though to get it all working perfectly, so it's nice to be able to pass on a bit of knowledge to help others out from time to time and save them a bit of heartache.