I’m curious to know if anybody else finds their computer behaving sluggishly or erratically when downloading torrents.

For the record: I use transmission on a 2020 imac and have tried other clients to little avial. A virus and/or activity check doesn’t reveal anything untoward going on in the background.

I’m not sure what’s going on, but torrenting is either resource intensive (possibly RAM) or writing to the harddrive results in poor performance overall. Or maybe its something else (like my vpn draining resources)? Either way, when I torrent I might as well walk away from my computer because that’s all it seems it wants to do, and even then its performance remains erratic.

  • Riven@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    13·
    2 years ago

    Bittorrent opens a ton of simultaneous connections that can overwhelm the pos router supplied by some ISPs. If that’s your issue, lowering the max # of connections could not only clear it up but also increase your download speed

    • eggdaddy@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      This was my fix also. Switched to my own router and no problems since then. Should really have bought one sooner honestly.

  • Teknikal@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    Probably have to many network threads running on the client. I’d suggest halfing them just to see if it makes a difference.

  • iamacat@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    Have you tried limiting download/upload speeds? It might reduce the load on whatever your bottleneck is.

  • Tippon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    32·
    2 years ago

    Try resetting the Transmission settings to default, turning off your VPN, and downloading a Linux ISO. If the problem stays, it’s possibly a hardware issue. If the problem goes away, turn the VPN on and try again. If the problem returns, the VPN is the issue.

    I know you said you’ve tried other clients, but try them with the VPN disabled too, in case Transmission is the problem.

    Good luck 👍

  • bsquared@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    I did notice some sluggishness when I used to torrent on my previous computer which had an HDD. I have sinced moved all torrenting to my NAS because it’s always on, so I don’t need to worry about turning on the torrent client (it’s just always on)

  • TokyoMonsterTrucker@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    12·
    2 years ago

    I used to run hundreds of torrents on early 2000s hardware and it was fine. Not sure what the problem is, but it’s not the bittorrent protocol.