Community Forums

Many common questions here in the forum can be classified to a few main categories. I tried to create a very short beginners' guide about the the most common situations. I hope this guide answers your question before you asked it.

For everybody it is good to understand that

• there is no central server from which you download. Everything that users download, is at the same time uploaded by other users
• you contact other users for your downloads
• respectively, others should be able to contact you (NAT & port forwarding to be configured)

Generally when diagnosing possible problems with Azureus/Vuze, it is good to look into torrent details views (My torrents, Detailed list) and especially look into torrent health icons, "the smileys". http://wiki.vuze.com/w/Torrent_health

Please note, that many useful options discussed here are not shown in the "Beginner" mode.
You have to first set your user proficiency to "Intermediate" (or Advanced") in Mode page of Options.
http://wiki.vuze.com/w/UG_Options#Mode_options

For self diagnostics:
A) Vuze/Azureus complains about NAT, and/or torrent "Health smileys" remain yellow (or blue). You never get green smileys.
B) You get green smileys, but downloads seem slow. Loading large files takes ages.
C) Everything goes well, but using Vuze makes other internet tasks (www usage) uncomfortably slow.

More troubleshooting information in more structured format can be found in the Wiki and FAQ:
http://wiki.vuze.com/w/Troubleshooting
http://wiki.vuze.com/w/Good_settings
http://wiki.vuze.com/w/UG_Options
http://faq.vuze.com/

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A) NAT Problem / yellow smileys

If you do not get green smileys (they all stay yellow or blue) as torrents' Health status, or Vuze complains about NAT problem, then you most likely have a NAT related problem regarding port forwarding ( http://wiki.vuze.com/w/PortForwarding ) or your software firewall blocks Vuze traffic. Third reason might be that your ISP is blocking/throttling bittorrent traffic (more info at end of section B).

You should ensure that Vuze/Azureus is allowed internet traffic to both directions in your software firewall (Windows firewall, F-Secure, Symantec, Norton, ...) configuration.

If your PC has a local IP number from ranges 192.168.xx.xx, 172.xx.xx.xx or 10.xx.xx.xx, then you know it is a "private IP address", which can not be contacted from outside without configuring the router (and/or modem) to forward incoming packets to your computer. Most likely your modem/router has given you that as part of its NAT functionality: it receives all incoming traffic from outside to its "public" IP address on WAN/internet side and then forwards the traffic to your computer inside the router's private network (your home network). Router has given your PC a new internal private IP address, and your computer sends and receives all internet traffic through the router. For connections which you have initiated (like www browsing), the router automatically knows the routing, but for programs like Vuze, which can also be contacted from outside, you need to tell the router the correct routing. See the example below:


You can check the PC's IP address e.g. with IPCONFIG command:


If the terminology here looks difficult, then in addition to reading my advice, you might also watch a video about setting a port for Vuze and configuring port-forwarding in a router. I created a short video about the process with Di-524 router in Windows (takes less than 2 min, best watched in Youtube's full screen mode): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuC2sUgMDsE
For Mac users, the following does the same for a different router in Mac environment in 6 mins: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JwZa0TRUV0

If you haven't already done that, you should maybe look into the port-forward guide specific to your router and modem in this site: http://www.portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwarding/routerindex.htm
First select your router or modem from the list, and from the next page select Azureus as application. Then you will get the right guide for you. And despite the advice in the portforwarding.com guides, you do not need to forward port 6881, as you need only to configure forwarding for the one port you have selected Vuze to use.

Wiki article: http://wiki.vuze.com/w/NAT_problem
Example:


For the port forwarding to work, you have to have the same internal "private" IP address everytime. This can be a "static" IP address set in PC's TCP/IP config (like in portforward.com's guide's examples) or it can usually be configured at your router's DHCP config either by setting lease-time to "forever" or by setting a fixed / reserved DHCP IP address for certain (your) PC. Usually it is easier to set in router, so I tend to advice not to set it in the PC, ( but instructions can be found at http://www.portforward.com/networking/staticip.htm ). And it is good to understand, that usually in a small home network you will get the same address from router in any case, so I wouldn't worry too much about setting the fixed/static IP address. That is the least important step in port-forward config in home network.

Selecting a port to use: I would select a random port number between 10000-40000.
I personally do not like the "officially" suggested range 49152-65535, as ports in that range are mostly used by OS, programs (like www browser) and hardware (router NAT table) for outgoing connections. When using a port above 49152, you always run to a risk that some other program has randomly grabbed that port before you start Vuze. In my Vista, the OS seems to grab ports 49152-49158 at boot...
In Windows environment, you can check which ports are currently in use by some program with the CMD commandline command NETSTAT -A . Select some port which is not shown. It should output the currently used ports with something like:
So, I have lots of free ports to choose in 10000-40000... all free except 12110.

Double router port forwarding:
If you have both a NATting modem and a NATting router/basestation, or two NAT routers, you may need to set port forwarding in both of them. You need to set port forwarding at each router all the way from "public internet" upto your PC, always setting the forward to the next device inwards (from modem to router, and from router to PC). See an explanation here:
http://www.portforward.com/help/doublerouterportforwarding.htm
A clear sign of this need is if your router has also on its WAN/ADSL/internet side (whatever it is called in router status/config screens) a private IP address. "Private" IP address ranges are 10.x.x.x, 172.x.x.x and 192.168.x.x, and IP addresses inside those areas are different from other addresses, as they can not be reached from outside without port forwarding.

Only private IP:
Some ISPs only give users private IP address from those private ranges and then users are most likely doomed to live with yellow faces. (Note: Vuze NAT test will not find this out, as it will always show the first real public IP address it reaches.) If your "outermost" device has a private IP address (10.x.x.x, 172.x.x.x and 192.168.x.x) in its config/status screens as WAN/internet address, then it has been given by ISP's network and there isn't much you can do.

Ports blocked:
Some ISPs block incoming ports as a security measure. In that case, no unsolicited connection from outside gets through to you. You might test your port-forward config and try to identify the problematic phase by temporarily removing router and connecting PC directly to ISP line, in order to see if you get green smileys then. If you have tried everything else, you might call your ISP and ask to verify that they do no automatically block ports.

Vuze options:
In Vuze's Connection options, make sure that the "Incoming connection" and "From a tracker" are enabled as Peer sources (by default they are). Disabling them tell Vuze to discard practically all connections attempts.
http://wiki.vuze.com/w/UG_Options#Connection_options

Traffic shaping:
Your ISP may also monitor and throttle bittorrent traffic. Check the Bad ISP list: http://wiki.vuze.com/w/Bad_ISPs
If you think you might be blocked/throttled/shaped, you might consider encrypting Vuze traffic: http://wiki.vuze.com/w/Avoid_traffic_shaping

Note:
Please also understand that being unconnectable with yellow faces does not directly decrease your download speed. It prevents others from initiating contact with you, but after you have contacted them the data transfer works just normally. So, it decreases peer population as "eager partners" can't contact you. So, it may indirectly decrease your speed as you may have less peers in reachable swarm. And, two clients with yellow faces can never contact each other
So, being connectable and having green faces is good.

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B) Green smileys, slow traffic

If you get green smileys as torrents' "Health", then you know that your basic network settings are ok. However, that doesn't guarantee speedy transfers.

It is good to understand that

• there is no central server from which you download. Everything that users download, is at the same time uploaded by users
• you contact other users for your downloads
• respectively, others should be able to contact you (NAT & port forwarding to be configured)

It is quite possible with a "new" torrent or an one with "small" swarm (only a few peers), that the missing pieces are not available. So, it is quite possible that torrent remains active with "downloading" status, but is not actively downloading anything as there is nobody to download from.

The low speed or inactivity may also be due to low amount of seeds/peers in the torrent, or their slow upload capability. As there is no central server, your download speed is directly dependent on uploads from others. The torrent's downloaders' total download speed matches the total upload speed.

You can monitor individual torrent's status very well by opening the details for that torrent. http://wiki.vuze.com/w/UG_Advanced_Information#General_tab
Vuze contains dozens of data items which will help you to understand why a torrent is slow, or why it doesn't progress. The same fields can also be seen in "My torrents" and "Detailed list". You can rather freely select the fields shown by using Column setup dialog http://wiki.vuze.com/w/Column_setup . (For some mystery reason, some of the most useful fields require "Intermediate" or "Advanced" user mode, which you can change in Options / Mode.)

Some key fields for torrent status:

• Done: your own download completetion percentage
• Availability: tells you how many full copies you see right now. If Availability is below 1.0, you don't see a full copy now and can't complete the download now. In new swarms, there is only the original uploader and others start empty. Thus the Availability may be over 1.0, but in reality most peers have only a few percents completed. This may lead to slow downloads. For example, if you are connected to 1 seed and 88 peers, your Done is 30% and Availability is 1.32 (132%), then in practise only the original seeder has full 100% copy, and the others (you included) have 32% of data. As you already had 30%, the other peers only have 2 more percents of data for you to download.
• Swarm average speed: tells you how quickly others are downloading on average. Individual speeds depend on bandwidth (and luck), but the average is roughly what you should expect to reach yourself.
• ETA: Estimated Time of Arrival. Fluctuates, but tells you a rather realistic forecast of remaining download time.

I have attached a picture of my Vuze, and it shows typical situations with torrents and that the speed vary a lot by individual torrents:

• Torrent 1 is 62% Done, but has only .640 availability, so not much to download from. 0(1) Seeds, 33(97) peers. I have no contact with the single seed, who is the only one with the remaining 36%. Download speed has dropped to less than 1 kB/s. The remaining download time (ETA) is over 21 days.
• Torrent 2 is 52% Done, and has availability of 1.539. So, I have contact with the single seed (1.), but the others are (.539) roughly where I am (.524), so the speed is currently only 10 kB/s as most of the missing parts are available only from the single seed. ETA is 10 hours.
• Torrent 3 is 20% Done, and availability is 37.989, so there is abundance of seeds and the download speed is 493 kB/s. ETA is only 7 min.

More examples of Availability: http://wiki.vuze.com/w/Availability

In general, many bittorrent client implementation reward good uploaders when selecting data transfer partners, so your upload speed has impact on your download speed. So, having more upload speed in your ADSL/cable connection will also speed your downloads.

Please also understand, that ISPs typically use kilobits/megabits, while Vuze uses kiloBytes by default. 1 Byte = 8 bits, 1 kB/s = 8 kbit/s = 8 kb/s. Small and capital 'B's do matter. If your ISP has promised you a 500 kbit/s connection, you could thus expect max. 62 kB/s downloads...

The downloaded files can be really big. So the download can easily take hours or days with the biggest files.

Traffic shaping:
Your ISP may also monitor and throttle bittorrent traffic. Check the Bad ISP list: http://wiki.vuze.com/w/Bad_ISPs
If you think you might be blocked/throttled/shaped, you might consider encrypting Vuze traffic: http://wiki.vuze.com/w/Avoid_traffic_shaping

Please note, that many useful options discussed here are not shown in Vuze's "Beginner" mode.
You have to first set your user proficiency to "Intermediate" (or Advanced") in Mode page of Options.

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C) Internet gets slow when Vuze is active

If web browsing or e-mail usage seems slow while Vuze is active, or Vuze's speed constantly fluctuates going up and down, you may try to correct that by limiting Vuze's speed.

In general, Vuze uses as much internet bandwidth that you let it have. It downloads and uploads as fast as possible. In practice, most users have asymmetric ADSL or cable modem connection (like 1024/256kbit or 10/1MBit), where the upload is the critical factor, as it is much smaller that download bandwidth from your ISP. If Vuze takes over all your upload bandwidth, then even the web browsing gets slow as even your outgoing requests for web pages get slowed down. It also slows down your Vuze downloads, as data arrival messages and requests for new data also get stuck in the outgoing packet queue.

In most cases, you should not limit the download speed. You may limit it somewhat to leave room for web browsing etc., but in general the upload bandwidth is the one you should pay attention to.

The easiest way to try to correct "slow internet" is to go to Vuze's Transfer options ( http://wiki.vuze.com/w/UG_Options#Transfer_options ) and set the "global max upload speed" to 5-10 kB/s less than your max. upload bandwidth. (And please understand, that ISPs use kilobits/megabits, while Vuze uses kiloBytes by default. 1 Byte = 8 bits, 1 kB/s = 8 kbit/s = 8 kb/s. Small and capital 'B's do matter.) Pretty good simple thumb rule is to divide the ISP kbit/s speed by 10 and you arrive at rather suitable kByte/s speed for Vuze. For example, an ADSL with 700 kbit/s upload bandwidth, which corresponds to maybe about 70 kB/s as effective upload capability --> set max. global upload to 65-70 kB/s. That will leave enough bandwidth for web browsing and e-mails. Examples of reasonable settings can be found: http://wiki.vuze.com/w/Good_settings

After setting the max. speed, the more advanced way is to Use the built-in auto-speed functionality. That will sniff your internet connection speed and other usage and will manage the bandwidth that Vuze uses. The basic idea is to prevent Vuze from choking your upload bandwidth with too much traffic, but still try to upload as much as possible.

You can find it in: Tools/Options --> Transfer --> Auto-speed
http://wiki.vuze.com/w/UG_Options#Auto-Speed

You can set it to be active for downloading and seeding and then select either "Classic" or "beta" mode.

I personally prefer the autospeed "Classic" mode, as it can be tinkered to more detail. If you use Auto-speed classic, please remember to also set the max upload speed in its settings. (The "choking ping time" is the most important tinkering parameter there. It tells the autospeed, how well you want the connection to respond. I have it at 150 ms and decrease step at 13 kB/s to have aggressive speed reduction, if needed.)

Note: one possible reason for Vuze transfers stopping and web browsing slowing, is that you have too many connections, which confuses your router/modem. One symptom is that your modem/router reboots itself, or you need to unplug it for rebooting. You might try to limit "Max. connections globally" (in Transfer options: http://wiki.vuze.com/w/UG_Options#Transfer_options ) to 200 or less, especially if you have one of these routers: http://wiki.vuze.com/w/Bad_routers

Note: one additional possible reason is the built-in (security) limit for "half-open" connections built-in Windows TCPIP.SYS drivers since XP SP2 (included in XP SP3, Vista and Windows7 versions). If that is the reason, your Windows Event log contains errors with Event ID 4226 ( http://www.google.com/search?q=event+4226 ). The effect of the limitation can be mitigated by lowering the pace with which Vuze tries to open new connection in boot-up phase. Set the option "Max simultaneous outbound connection attempts" to 10 or less in Vuze's advanced Netwrok Settings ( http://wiki.vuze.com/w/UG_Options#Advanced_Network_Settings ). There are also 3rd-party patches for TCPIP.SYS drivers, which remove the limits, but you use the patches at your own risk.

Please note, that many useful options discussed here are not shown in the "Beginner" mode.
You have to first set your user proficiency to "Intermediate" (or Advanced") in Mode page of Options.

Edited by: mmore1q3 on 24-Mar-2009 20:14
Added own Youtube video.

Edited by: mmore1q3 on 24-May-2009 23:03
More wiki links

Edited by: mmore1q3 on 14-Jun-2009 14:21
images linked

Edited by: mmore1q3 on 01-Feb-2010 12:23
Changed the Wiki links

Edited by: mmore1q3 on 05-Feb-2010 21:20
Added NAT GIF

Edited by: mmore1q3 on 06-Feb-2010 11:41
Add smiley icons

I've added the troubleshooting guide to the "Network Problems" FAQ section: http://faq.vuze.com/?CategoryID=14

Thanks a bunch...
It worked just fine....

ShackSoul.

Probably.

Make sure to follow the flow of data from the Internet to your PC correctly. It depends on your setup.

It could look like this:
Internet -> Router (forward ports to..) -> second Router (forward the same ports to..) -> Your PC.

I don't answer questions is this Guide thread. If you have anything specific to ask, open a new thread.

But the portforward.com site (which link is mentioned in the original Guide text) has several TP-LINK routers listed there. So, you can have a guide for your router from there.

The basic tasks in router config are the same for all configurable routers.