My firewall kills my download speed....

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Ok, so I have ZoneAlarm running on my computer, and for some reason, it seems to decrease my download speed. I've been using BitTorrent to legally downlaod .pdf files for a stupid research project for my class...and when ever I have ZoneAlarm running, the fastest I've been able to download was 3Kbps. I've got a 256Kbps DSL line (slow I know) and when I shut ZA down, my download speed always goes up. I've seen it get up to 50Kbps...but on average it is about 25Kbps...not great, but it’s still better than 3K!

Is there a *good* reason ZoneAlarm restricts download speeds; and is there a way to increase the speed while still being protected?

 

Bittorrent for some part depends on outside computers initialising a connection with your computer.

These remote connections are default blocked by the firewall. They should be because this is the most important way how hackers and worms/virusses work, by initialising connections with your machine, exploiting the latest unpatched hole and delivering the nasty payload.

When this is blocked, the only connections between your computer and an external computer are the connections your computer has set up itself.
These are known as the local connections.

I don't know how sophisticated ZoneAlarm is, but the standard way for increasing the downloadspeed is allowing remote connections for (and only for) the bittorrent port.

 

ZoneAlarm Control Panel -> Firewall -> Internet Zone Security -> Set to "Medium".

Also give Azureus full access under Program Control.

 

Make sure you have the *free* version instead of the commercial one, which has become bloated with somewhat confusing and useless features. Using it, the free version, myself. Just 'allow' your BT-client to access the net when it asks it and that's about it. At least with ABC and uTorrent, which have worked just fine with me.

[ July 09, 2006, 19:15: Message edited by: Wordplay ]

 

Ok, so here's one more question...which Torrent client is the best? I don't really like how Azureus works/looks, and I've been using the BitTorrent client up to this point.

Are they any good and reliable ones out there?

 

Pretty much Azureus. Azureus is the best client, it's just a memory hog.

I'm using ABC as a backup client to troubleshoot Azureus.

 

Depends. I prefer uTorrent due of it being able to encrypt the connection (no snooping!) and ABC (Yet Another BitTorrent Client) was a pretty neat too since it had a simple interface.

 

uTorrent gets two thumbs up from me. AZ is slowly being banned by most groups as people have devised ways to cheat their upload rates using it.

 

i have been using bitcomet. it has multi language interface (i use simplified chinese). never experience any problem after a year of using.

 

I've been using Azureus, and the only problem is that is ****s my internet connection up. I can't use the internet while its running, and then I have to reset the whole thing (unpluggin some modems and ****). But, it can download a whole bunch of things at once (unlike the regular Bittorrent program) at relatively good rates (relatively )