Facing sluggish torrent downloading speeds in Canada? Whether you are using torrents to download public domain films, Debian-based Linux systems, or any other legally distributed thing through torrents, the connotation of using peer-to-peer (P2P) applications is that you must get faster download speeds.
Many Canadians use torrent sites to download different types of material available on P2P networks. However, despite legal freedom, you might face issues while using torrents like torrent blocking. In that case, we suggest you select right VPN while torrenting in Canada. Other than that, you might also experience slower speeds that drag the downloads for hours.
Unsteady or sluggish download speeds of torrents can be created by wrong settings, problems at the internet service provider’s end, or several other factors. Luckily, you can easily these issues with very little effort. So whenever you are facing slow torrent download speed, follow the tips given in this article and bring the best out of your torrent clients.
Here are 10 tips and tricks to increase torrent download speeds in Canada:
What factors slow down torrent download speeds?
There can be different factors that might cause your torrent client to act up. Some of the possible reasons for slow download speeds in Canada are:
- Internet data limitation or network speed
- Poor seeders to leechers ratio (fewer seeders and more leechers)
- Bandwidth throttling by your ISP (internet service provider)
- Firewall settings blocking torrents
1. Change Your Internet Service Provider
The internet speed is controlled and regulated by your internet service provider. To ensure a stable network, ISPs usually offer specific bandwidths and set limits on maximum download and upload speed. That means, your torrent download speeds will remain within the limits set by your ISP and won’t exceed that.
To determine the limit, use an internet speed test website (like www.speedtest.net) to estimate what download and upload speeds you are getting. If you think they are inadequate for your requirements, you must sign up with an ISP that’s offering faster speeds.
2. Use a VPN to Boost Your Torrent Speeds
“Traffic shaping” is a technique ISPs use to prioritize web traffic and data classification on their network. Through this, ISPs can identify the type of data being transferred and determine how vital it is to its endpoint. Generally, torrent file data has a very low priority.
Typically, torrent programs include features that take care of data encryption. However, these tools are insufficient to evade ISP traffic packet detection. To overcome this issue, we suggest using a VPN app that supports torrenting.
A VPN will help you encrypt your data and location, meaning that torrent download speed is not being restricted by traffic shaping.
3. Select the Right Torrent Client
Several torrent clients are available for major operating systems like macOS, Windows, Linux, Android, and iOS. However, selecting the right app for your OS is important.
It is recommended to use faster clients, like qBittorrent, Vuze, uTorrent, or BitTorrent. But whichever you pick, it should include customization options to enable you to maximize your torrent downloading and sharing.
4. Always Update Your Torrent Client
It’s always a good idea to ensure your software stays updated, including your torrent client. Performance bugs in your torrent client can potentially cause slower download speeds. Keeping it updated will regularly remove the performance issues making your torrent app work more efficiently.
5. Choose a Torrent File With Healthy Seeders to Leechers Ratio
A computer participating in the uploading and downloading of any torrent file is called a peer. Peers are further divided into seeders and leechers but we won’t go into technicalities.
In simple terms, a seeder is any person who has downloaded a file that is currently being shared on the P2P network. Whereas a leecher is anyone who is trying to download the file and hasn’t downloaded it completely. A leecher automatically turns into a seeder once the download is complete.
For faster torrent speeds, always choose a file with more seeders and lesser leechers. More seeders mean a healthier torrent file, hence higher download speeds.
6. Change Your Firewall Settings
Modern firewall apps usually block torrent clients when you try to run them and ask you with a prompt window whether to allow the app to go through or not. If your firewall software keeps blocking the torrent client, you can add it to the exceptions list in your firewall settings.
You must also allow your internet router to transfer the web traffic coming from your torrent client. This is typically done through the Port Forwarding feature of the router.
7. Upgrade Your PC (Laptop/Desktop)
The performance of your PC is another factor that affects the downloading speed of a torrent. An older PC model with outdated hardware, a slower processor, lesser RAM, and insufficient storage will not perform as optimally as the latest model.
8. Limit the Upload Rate of Downloaded Files
A peer-to-peer (P2P) network technically depends on the phenomenon of sharing. If there are no seeders (uploaders), you won’t be able to download a file. However, the upload speeds affect the downloading speed, but you can modify your uploading speed to get a faster downloading speed.
9. Change Torrent Connection and Bandwidth
Your torrent client’s settings preferences allow you to set the limits for a maximum number of connections and bandwidth. Tweak these settings wisely to get an optimal downloading speed from your torrent client. For example, you can change the maximum connections limit per torrent, or the worldwide maximum no. of uploading slots.
10. Switch to Ethernet Connectivity from a Wi-Fi Network
If you normally use a wireless connection (Wi-Fi) for torrenting, you are missing out on the trick. Instead, you can boost your internet speed considerably by using a wired connection through an ethernet slot in the modem. Wired connections guarantee higher speed, have lesser latency, and are always more stable than Wi-Fi networks.
Conclusion
We hope these tips and tricks will help you increase your overall torrenting speed from Canada. Have fun downloading!