Way to make bittorrent work with Tiscali:

Hey, dunno if this is common knowledge or not but if you set your bittorrent to work on port 443 (and use Azerus, its the best by far) then Tiscali doesnt screw your speeds up. I went thru a month of low speeds before I discovered that they 'port throttle' if you use bittorrent p2p and discovered the magic number, after changing to that speeds went back to normal!

Also, I've never had any problems with Limewire. Has always given me max of 55-60kBs (on a 512 line) even when bittorrent programs were giving me 0-5kBs.

Hope it works for you, would be interested actually to see if its just me or not.

yep your right, I had exactly the same problem, spent weeks trying to wo
rk out why my torrent speeds were so bad, even bought a new router thinking that was the problem. eventually googled it and found the same answer, you can also use other port numbers which are normaly assigned for other internet traffic, i.e. port 21 (ftp), port 8080 (http alt) etc. Just watch out you don't slow down another app using that port.

I don't know if Tiscali are doing this for everyone or just p2p users, they certainly haven't published the fact or notified their customers. I don't consider myself a heavy user, 15gb a month at the most, and although I have a 2mb connection only use about 25% bandwidth for torrents.

There currently testing a migration process, soon as its live I will be swapping to another isp.

Apparantly, from what I've read, it's done to everyone that uses bittorrent. They're able to identify the unique way packets of data are sent when using any p2p torrent app (which is why you may get good speeds for a while, then it goes down to 0-5kBs and also why this happens with any appyou try, since its the packet sending aspect of torrents that they've identified and cracked down on) and stop/slow down all activity of this type on the particular port.

If the ports that it works on are commonly used for core functions of IE etc then the Tiscali port-throttling software must have these pre-programmed into it so as to screw with your downloading more surepticiously.

Incidentaly, what is port 443 used for?

Hi, 443 is secure http (https), lots of shops and bank sites redirect you to it when your making transactions. If you want to know more try this link:

http://grc.com/port_443.htm

Cool, thanks. Interesting link.

its a secure port. That means you cant use it. Hence that is not a solution

Yes you can as your not trying to make an ssl connection on 443 just using the port for torrent traffic. its been working fine for me anyway

And me.

Praise the great Electric Bunny above for u lovely peeps...I've been going mad with 5kBs (at best) Torrents with BitLord & FireFox on Win XP Pro...was ok enough untill 'bout 20 days back...the port 443 setting given here by u wonder-peeps has it good-enough again... 40 kBs average...on a 1Mb ...but will lt last ???? ..can you wonder-bunnies give a list of other useable ports on Tiscali please...perhaps we need to change around time to time ???

Ah! an other 2 or 3 hours & I can acturally start watching Simpsons Season 16 after the 1st 1.5 of 2 Gigs took 2 weeks ....Luv mouse
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Further to my above post....here's a web page with comprehensive details of Table of Ports for Internet Services

http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~rakerman/...able.html#IANA

Perhaps some 1st grade clever person can use it to find which ports r likely to be useable for BitTorrent on Tiscali...
Some souces suggest that port no's above 40000 will work...don't find this myself ...
Luv mouse
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I've recently got a 2.3mbps tiscali service and use bittorrent alot and got really good speeds at first >200kb/s and was able to download things quicker than i could watch them, but now it's gone down to about 5kb/s. i use bit comet and tried azuerus, but it was going even slower, and when i changed what i can only assume is the port number (titled 'Listening Port' in Bit Comet) to 443 i got faster speeds, but still very slow for my connection, i've got a combined speed of 43kb/s on four torrents, all with about 10-30 seeders, and even when i only have 1 torrent running i get low speeds. Is there something else i need to do or haven't done right?

Hmm, not long after writing that post, everything corrected itself and i am downloading again at 220kb/s, so i can also agree that port 443 is the way forward. Cheers.

Ihave 1mb Tiscali...Your connection will in fact be 2mb ...the 2.3 mb shown on the Line monitor program is a measure of the Modem & local line TOP possible speed ..mine sais the same even way back when I only had a 150kb connection....

I.ve been using BiTTorents for a year ...have it running with various Torrents...films...games..music..and the 40kb average seems to be the best it can do ...looking around the net this seems typical for most peeps...VERY ocasionally it goes to 112 kb (max. possible on 1mb line) ...but mostly it drifts between 20kb & 50kb with the upline at a solid 25kbs ...which is the up max.
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I found this forum due to frustration with port throttling on a Tiscali 2Mb connection that dropped from peak transfer speeds of > 100 K/s to around 5 K/s ... I was convinced something at my end was wrong !!!

The Port 443 fix seems to have made a big difference but I'm currently downloading stuff with a very low Seed : Leech ratio so it ain't gonna be quick !!

I'm using the Bittorrent client after having major memory leak issues with ABC and BitTornado ... this seems to limit me to 3 torrents downloading at any time which is probably no big deal ... I added a third this morning before heading for work and that seemed to start downloading approx 40 K/s .. but the other two dropped to about 5 K/s each !!

Not sure if this is coincidence or not, and didn't have time to hang around to check !!

Progress though ... what's the chances of Tiscali throttling port 443 or will they take the view that so little people are using that port, it wouldn't be worth the hassle ?

Mark M

Just a quick foot note to this thread. Using port 443 will give you good download speeds, but you are still relying on others to share a bittorrent. In my experience, even with a 2mb Tiscali connection, I still struggle to get much above 40kb/s simply because people don't share ... I have four torrents running at the moment that are stuck at around 60% complete but with no seeds ...

Tiscali have really ****ed me off now. I spent 2 hrs last week on the phone to them altogether. i was promised a phonecall from their technical centre, (i recorded the conversation), but i didn't get one, i had my time wasted and now they tell me they have "issues with my usage". Gymps. They are liars, and my usage was well below the cap anyway. I'm gonna argue like hell with em.

I don't think Tiscali are very keen on anyone using p2p software, they're obviously frightened about the legal cases currently going on. I can understand that, but they would get more respect if they just admitted they were restricting all p2p ports regardless of usage.

I don't know how long we'll get away with using the standard ports, I don't think they can stop these ports ,as it would effect virtually all of their customers. So I expect we'll get the warning emails about usage and threatened with cut off.

Well it'd be great if those ports worked for me but they dont. When i use those ports torrent picks up LOADS of seeds and peers but the download speed stays at zero! very peculiar...

Prakash Patel....you should be getting at least something happening...did the torrents used to work ? ..have you checked your firewall settings.....?

Well i do get summat if i stick to the normal ports-6881-6889 but it max at 5kb, and the light is green. It used to be 100 kb. I hadnt changed any settings when the problem had occured, and i have since restarted all configurations, but i still got same prob. Its definitely them doin it. Strange thing is when i switch to ports like 443, 80, i get loads of peers and seeds but no upload or download! very peculiar what they are doin to me...

Prakash, that sounds like a firewall issue, are you using the Windows firewall or a thirdparty ? I'd check to see that they're port fowarding on port 443 to the PC your using for downloads, also what p2p client are you using. Try a different torrent client to see if that helps

If you are using P2P at peak times, you will get capped, but using it during their off peak hours you should not, as there is no restrictions. Check here and you will see:

http://www.tiscali.co.uk/products/br...d/tcs/tfu.html

Hope this helps.

I told them that on many occasions!! they ignored me! i used the "angry letter" and changed my phone package to onetel 3 days ago, and all of a sudden tiscali have lifted the restriction! i'm a happy downloader now! dunno how long this is gonna last for tho

Just make sure that you use P2P off peak and not at peak times, otherwise you will eventually be restricted. It has to do with the use of bandwidth and being fair to many people using the Internet at peak times, that is why there is a restriction at that time and why customers are asked to use such software off-peak, then you should be fine.

Well, I got my warning number 1 email yesterday saying that my usage is excessive and avoid major downloads via peak times or be "managed".

Given that peak is 6pm to 11pm (Mon - Fri) and 12pm to 4pm at weekends, I don't thinks its actually unreasonable !

Now, does anyone have any tips for bittorrent client that can schedule download times to avoid Tiscali peaks ??? I currently use the BitTorrent client available at http://www.bittorrent.com and love its simplicity and its low memory overhead ... can ABC etc schedule downloads or can I configure my internet connection to establish only outside peak times etc?

Mark M

I hate answering my own posts but ..............

For those looking to painlessly automate the process of stopping downloading at peak times, uTorrent is a great little app ... low overhead torrent client with built in schedular.

Not sure if its the client but I'm getting regualr downloads > 100Kbps as opposed to a previous max of about 40Kps .. and thats using the "Random Port" setting !!

Link: http://www.utorrent.com/download.php

Mark M

Thanks for that utorrent suggestion...will difinately try it...only seeing 20 to 40 kbs with BitLord

I've been "managed/capped" by tiscali!!! and thats for using bit torrent at OFF PEAK times!, even though its not peak times now (3am) im getting a max of 20kb/s! they even decided to give me the 3 warnings all in one day...then sent another email saying that my account was being cancelled due to heavy usage, didnt mind taking next months payment though!

omg ur like the greatest person ever i have tryed 10000 different ports and still got throttled ty so very much

I've just spend a large part of the day trying the latest versions of Utorrent and Azureus which have RC4 Encryption included to try and get around the shaping / Limiting used by Tiscali (and just about every other ISP it seems).
tryed all the settings...tried all the Port tricks ...makes no difference ..
Tiscali have changed the way the limiting is done in recent mounths..
Useing different Ports will not work now..

there is a FAQ and discussion group re: this here ;
http://www.torrentfreak.com/how-to-...orrent-traffic/
One or 2 peeps with Tiscali report success recently..
Not me right now a Video Torrent with 10 seeds 20 peers is cralwing along
at bout 6kb down 11 kb up ....I expect it will go to maybe 30kbs up after 1am
for a few hours only..
Mouse (Oh sigh !)