Downloading saturates inet bandwidth

Hi group,
I'm using Slackware 10.0 for every-day use and Redhat 9 as a router to
a 2mb ADSL line.
All works well until I use some downloading tool (I noticed this on
jigdo and MLDonkey, there can be a few others), then (in the case of
jigdo) I can't pass the 40KB/s or (in the case of MLDonkey) I
disconnect entirely.
If I do stay online all is really slow (a simple ping to my DNS has
gone from 20ms to 700ms)...
I really don't know what could cuase this...
Any ideas?

Hobbit HK wrote:

> If I do stay online all is really slow (a simple ping to my DNS has
> gone from 20ms to 700ms)...

Most peer-to-peer network programs have a setting to limit
the upload bandwidth used. There's usually a "sweet spot"
you find through experimentation that allows pretty fast
upload without strangling your network. The reason is
that even if you are only "downloading" there's always
network traffic in the other direction to tell the sender
that packets were received or to resend or whatever.
If you use all the available space for uploading,
this interrupts the upload messages the network needs
to run properly.

If you google you can find some introduction to basic
tcp/ip networking that explains the gory details if
you are really that curious.

--

"Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons."
Woody Allen

KungFusion <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:<(E-Mail Removed)>...
> Hobbit HK wrote:
>
> > If I do stay online all is really slow (a simple ping to my DNS has
> > gone from 20ms to 700ms)...
>
> Most peer-to-peer network programs have a setting to limit
> the upload bandwidth used. There's usually a "sweet spot"
> you find through experimentation that allows pretty fast
> upload without strangling your network. The reason is
> that even if you are only "downloading" there's always
> network traffic in the other direction to tell the sender
> that packets were received or to resend or whatever.
> If you use all the available space for uploading,
> this interrupts the upload messages the network needs
> to run properly.
>

Thanks... I'm looking for that "sweet spot" for some time now... But
i've noticed something weird (at least for me), if I limit the upload
to 1kb/s (as I always do) everything's okay, but if I limit to more
than that, everything becames slower, even when the program diesn't
necessariliy uses all the bandwidth I gave it (it can use 1 out of 5
KB/s and it'll still be slower), do you have some explanation for
that?
> If you google you can find some introduction to basic
> tcp/ip networking that explains the gory details if
> you are really that curious.

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 05:33:02 -0700, Hobbit HK wrote:
> KungFusion <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:<(E-Mail Removed)>...
>> Hobbit HK wrote:
>>
>> > If I do stay online all is really slow (a simple ping to my DNS has
>> > gone from 20ms to 700ms)...
>>
>> Most peer-to-peer network programs have a setting to limit
>> the upload bandwidth used. There's usually a "sweet spot"
>> you find through experimentation that allows pretty fast
>> upload without strangling your network. The reason is
>> that even if you are only "downloading" there's always
>> network traffic in the other direction to tell the sender
>> that packets were received or to resend or whatever.
>> If you use all the available space for uploading,
>> this interrupts the upload messages the network needs
>> to run properly.
>
> Thanks... I'm looking for that "sweet spot" for some time now... But
> i've noticed something weird (at least for me), if I limit the upload
> to 1kb/s (as I always do) everything's okay, but if I limit to more
> than that, everything becames slower, even when the program diesn't
> necessariliy uses all the bandwidth I gave it (it can use 1 out of 5
> KB/s and it'll still be slower), do you have some explanation for
> that?

That sounds odd. You shouldn't have to do your own throttling of the
upload traffic. All that stuff is queued by the running programs.
Furthermore, the file transfer protocols usually allow several packets "in
transit" before they stop to await confirmations. I suspect you might have
other problems, like maybe not enough memory? Are you swapping/paging? Are
you maybe throttled by heavy CPU usage to support IDE disk drive?

--
Juhan Leemet
Logicognosis, Inc.