How to Accelerate uTorrent

The program uTorrent, or µTorrent, is a popular BitTorrent client, a program that allows the user to open .torrent files and connect to other users to share data. Like any data-downloading and -uploading process, uTorrent can operate slowly or quickly depending on various settings and Internet usage. Often, uTorrent can be accelerated to run at a speed near the maximum bandwidth of your Internet connection.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Halt other Internet activity on your network. If you are using the Internet to download other files or other computers on the network are using bandwidth, uTorrent will run more slowly.

2. Find a .torrent file with many seeds and peers. Seeds and peers are other users that have the full or partial file you are looking to download. Attempting to download a file with only a handful of peers will usually result in very slow download speeds.

3. Alter your upload settings. In uTorrent, your maximum download speed is based on the upload speed you have set to discourage people from being pure "leechers," meaning they download files but do not upload any. Open uTorrent, click "Options," then click "Preferences," and change the settings under the "Bandwidth" tab ("Torrents" tab in some versions). Generally, setting your upload speed to around 80% of your connection's max upload speed will result in good speed.

4. Change your max download speed. In the same menu as the upload speed, there will be a field for max download speed. Usually, this is set to 0 by default, which means unlimited speed. This setting can actually make your connection run more slowly, so change it to about 90% of your Internet connection's max download speed.

Tips & Warnings

• Because uTorrent is light on system resources, it is one of the best BitTorrent programs for multitasking. The program uTorrent is one of many different BitTorrent clients. If it gives you too many problems, you can always download and use a different client.