qBT "steals" all my bandwidth when in use. Load balancing available?

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UglyStuff
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qBT "steals" all my bandwidth when in use. Load balancing available?

Post by UglyStuff »

Hi everyone,

My Internet setup is a bit peculiar in the sense that I rely on a cheap 4G router (a TP-Link M7200 if you must know) that does an excellent job at providing me with the best download and upload speeds in my area of residence.

I don't think it's at fault when it comes to my predicament, but if you think different, feel free to say so.

I have two PCs: a Lenovo running Windows Server 2019 (connected to the router via WiFi) that only acts as a local file server, and an HP laptop that connects via USB over RNDIS. On the HP, when I download stuff with qBT, everything else grinds to a halt. Even if the download rate is low (say, a few hundred kbps when the connection would allow for up to 60Mbps), loading a webpage in my Web browser becomes impossible because the connection times out.

Is there a way to balance the load in qBT so that it doesn't preempt all the available bandwidth for its own use, even if download rates are lower than the max bandwidth my Internet connection can offer?
unseen19
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Re: qBT "steals" all my bandwidth when in use. Load balancing available?

Post by unseen19 »

Hi,

Both computers are slow or only the one with QBT? IT will help determine if the 4G router is the problem or the USB driver for RNDIS (for example).

Both bandwidth and number of connection can be related to such. May you try to reduce in the QBT preferences the total number of connections to something lower and test? Let's say 30 ans increase this number if it has a positive effect (default is 500 I think)

You can find the setting here
Edit>preferences>connection>Global maximum number of connections
UglyStuff
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Re: qBT "steals" all my bandwidth when in use. Load balancing available?

Post by UglyStuff »

Hi,

Thanks for taking the time! To answer your question, the Lenovo is a bit on the old side (2011) but it's out of the equation since I do my downloading on the HP, which I bought new in March 2021.

I'll try and change the max number of connections setting to see if it changes anything, but from the impression I get, qBT seems to allocate all the available (non-system-reserved) bandwidth to itself when running, not just when downloading, but also when seeding.

I could limit qBT's I/O with Process Hacker, for example, but that would be overkill if there is a convenient way to do it from the application itself. I've looked into Settings before, and the only thing you can play with is CPU priority, nothing else.
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Peter
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Re: qBT "steals" all my bandwidth when in use. Load balancing available?

Post by Peter »

It's not your bandwidth IMO but the router/4G connection limit. You must lower the connection limit way lower.
qBT seems to allocate all the available (non-system-reserved) bandwidth to itself when running, not just when downloading, but also when seeding.
Of course, that's what people want. You want to upload as much as possible, and you want to download as fast as possible. If that's not the case, you can _always_ limit the speeds of all the torrents, or even individual torrents. In your case, using uTP is the only option IF you wish to max speeds out AND want to have a somewhat OK connection meanwhile. It won't ever be perfect because you can't ever nail your max up/down speeds.

So.
- Set qBittorrent to uTP only. (Settings - Connection - Peer connection protocol and set it to uTP).
- Lower connection count by a lot. Your router / 4G is NOT very multi-connection friendly.
UglyStuff
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Re: qBT "steals" all my bandwidth when in use. Load balancing available?

Post by UglyStuff »

I hear your arguments, but I don't think the router is the culprit, because it delivers a steady, 40+ Mbps downlink, with next to no ups and downs, and everything takes place on the same PC (the HP), so it's not a matter of one PC gobbling up all my bandwidth running qBT, with the other PC competing for crumbs.

I just did an Nperf and I got a spike at 42 Mbps (it's almost 6 pm here, so there must be a lot of people connecting to the same 4G tower as me) with an average 37, and an upload spiking at almost 25 Mbps (average: 22), and a latency in the low 40's. Remember, this router outputs 150 Mbps as a maximum.

I'll check if switching to UDP-only makes things better, and maybe I'll set a speed limit on downloads, and I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks for the input in any case!

EDIT: I'll switch to uTP, not UDP...
UglyStuff
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Re: qBT "steals" all my bandwidth when in use. Load balancing available?

Post by UglyStuff »

OK, switching to uTP as Peter advised seems to have stopped the hemorrage! \o/

Thank you so much!
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Peter
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Re: qBT "steals" all my bandwidth when in use. Load balancing available?

Post by Peter »

No problem, uTP was specifically developed for this scenario. Basically reach as much speed as possible, while keeping a reliable connection for other applications. Glad it worked out!
UglyStuff
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Re: qBT "steals" all my bandwidth when in use. Load balancing available?

Post by UglyStuff »

Well, it's me again, and not with good news. qBT has started to act up again, even in µTP. I'm going to reinstall it, but I can't for the life of me understand why it's doing it all over again, after behaving itself for a while.
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Peter
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Re: qBT "steals" all my bandwidth when in use. Load balancing available?

Post by Peter »

4G/mobile internet is really not comfortable with multiple connections. When I used that, I used a VPN (Windscribe) and then torrented on top of that. Because that way I had one single connection to the VPN server and not hundreds to other peers. Maybe try a VPN. You can build your own with Wireguard easily, tons of good guides out there.

Or, if you are not familiar with any of those, you can pay a few $ / mo for a seedbox and just download your stuff with sftp, ftp, scp, syncthing, anything you prefer basically.
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Re: qBT "steals" all my bandwidth when in use. Load balancing available?

Post by UglyStuff »

I understand, but the 4G connection I have at home is quite stable and reasonably fast (well over 40Mbps), plus the modem I use acts as a router. This issue only arise when qBT is ***running***, even if it's not downloading or uploading anything, just running with all downloads and seeding on pause.

No other computer or mobile device is connected to the 4G router when that happens. Just my HP laptop.

It seems to me that qBT reserves all the available bandwidth to itself, leaving nothing to other programs. For a while, I though µTP was the solution, but that's not the case. I'm going to try and fiddle with the OS-reserved bandwidth, just in case, but I'm pretty sure the problem comes from qBT.
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Re: qBT "steals" all my bandwidth when in use. Load balancing available?

Post by PriitUring »

Router:
IGMP snooping - is it enabled?
Location in the room - is it next to window?
Wi-Fi - disabling it helps or make speedtests better?
Can you try with ethernet cable instead of USB?

Other:
Try different provider if don't wish to use VPN, that's what helped me. You can check CellMapper website or android app to see which ISP LTE towers provide more or better bands, are nearer, have multiple cells transmitting to you, have better line of sight to your nearest window. Info might be outdated or not tested with more advanced LTE smartphone.

Use qB torrenting queuing function, it stops from seeding and downloading multiple torrents at the same time, not as good as uT, because you need to manually force or change order of which should be fully downloaded before everything else before qB automatically allows to seed any completed or partially downloaded torrents.

I have Netgear MR1100, supports LTE Advanced Cat16, switching to different network provider solved my issue. Although speedtest showed me same good speed and 22ms latency for both providers.

I did try using good TP-Link TL-SG108E v3 network switch with IGMP snooping function, limiting max speed, using cFos program on Windows, updating AMD chipset and Intel network drivers, changing max transmit and receive buffers, using Windows 11, none of them helped. Maybe because another ISP LTE transmitter is nearer, has less users, uses different technologies more suitable for my good enough router or has better QoS that doesn't affect or limit other non UDP connections, because ISP can allow max Speedtest, but limit other connections, even in night time when there should be less active users.

Having max speed 150mbs on paper doesn't mean it has good QoS or advanced enough to receive and transmit all multiple connections available from your ISP LTE tower, some devices have 10-20 stream count, support for LTE-FDD and LTE-TDD when your router has Wi-fi turned off, there's also a big difference in supported LTE frequencies, LTE Cat, amount of supported carrier aggregations for better download and upload and can use multiple or different better combinations to get lower latency, less dropouts and faster connection.
UglyStuff
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Re: qBT "steals" all my bandwidth when in use. Load balancing available?

Post by UglyStuff »

I hear you, but I don't have another SIM card to try with. Both my SIMs are with the same mobile provider, and both work fine. I've just put the one I use for data transfer in my old iPhone 6, and the issue remains: as soon as qBT starts running, there's no bandwidth left for other programs. I quit qBT and everything returns to normal.

Plain and simple.

I had already experienced a similar issue in my previous appartment, where we had fiber optics and a downlink exceeding 100Mbps, so I doubt my (excellent) 4G connection is at fault.

I'll give it another try tomorrow and keep you posted. In any case, thanks for trying to help!
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