when to download torrents?

Question

When is the best time to download torrents for maximum speed and efficiency? Sometimes they download at 80kb/s, others it's a paltry 8kb/s. So when's the best time?

Answer 1

ISPs (Internet Service Providers), generally ask you to download offpeak , as day time traffic is much higher than at night, they may somehow set limits on using p2p (peer-to-peer) software, other than this, you should be able to maintain maximum speed at anytime.

else, since you have a fast connection, the speed that you get from torrents is highly dependant on the number of people in the swarm (the total number of seeders and peers, note seeders are people that have the file 100% complete and are actively uploading it)
so this means, if there are more people on it, speed will be higher.

Know that torrent speeds are based on (insignificantly, you can always stop seeding after completion though it's bad practice :>) "maintaining a 1:1 ratio", generally, download speeds are always faster than your upload speeds.

Mainly it is the luck of the draw, if you're connected to a person with a fast upload, you will download fast from them, or if you're connected to more people, you'll download even faster, thus torrents are usually slow starting out, but increase in speed after a time.

The highly and most important reason,is based on your router/modem NAT (network area translation) rules, which you can configure, by accessing your router/modem page at - most commonly, http://192.168.0.1/ or http://10.1.1.2/ - http://www.portforward.com/ will assist you with setting up the NAT rules, by forwarding a port.

now though, utorrent, http://www.utorrent.com/ contains it's own speed guide, settings and help on port forwarding, to set it up for optimal use.

Answer 2

For some reason mine go lot faster over night and into the morning... like 12am to 10am, but that's just for me.