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Ive been having really annoying problems with bittorrent ever since I started using it.

For a start, I get really low download speeds (under 5k/sec most of the time), on my 300K connection (internet download speed 38k/sec ish)

Secondly, every so often (happens more than once an hour), the transfer rate drops down until it hits 0, then the computer stops working partially - open programs still work but I cannot run any new ones, and the internet also stops working.

Whats really annoying though is that my mates all use bittorrent with no problems at all - some are on the same ISP as me, others with other ISP's, yet they all get faster speeds than I do - even when they download the same file as me at the same time.

I am connected through a router (thats not the problem - it still occurs when I connect directly to the internet through the cable modem). These problems happen on any client that I use, eg, bittorrent, torrentstorm, azureus, ABC etc etc

What can I do to make the downloads go at a decent speed (in the past hour I've downloaded an amazingly crap 1.75mb )??

Well it depends on what you're getting doesn't it -- on BitTorrent, if it's not popular, it's slow, that's just how the network works. It's blazingly fast on files a lot of people are sharing. I've even gotten around 50kb/s on files only a dozen or so people were sharing on lucky occassions. But if it's a large file and it's not hot, don't bother.

Well theres over 100 peers Im connected to, and my mate was downloading the same file at the same time, and he was getting 50k/sec

Are you sure? It just sounds like the symtems of not having the firewall unblocked. Have you unblocked ports 6881 to 6889? You probably have but I thought it was worth mentioning.

yep, ports are forwarded (im sure of that because before I did it ages ago the light was yellow, and after unblocking them it went to green - and I still get the same problems when I connect to the internet directly through the modem, not using the router)