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what internet activity causes torrent downloads to slow down?
i have a roomate that frequently downloads videos with torrents, and he complains that they are slowing down recently.

is it possible that me watching videos causes his torrents to become slow? what about online gaming? what activities on the internet i should avoid while his torrents are working?

thx in advance, will gift steam points for good answers

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Showing 1-15 of 18 comments
cSg|mc-Hotsauce Dec 27, 2023 @ 3:59pm 
Originally posted by JolyJew СлаваУкраине:
what internet activity causes torrent downloads to slow down?


i have a roomate that frequently downloads videos with torrents, and he complains that they are slowing down recently.

is it possible that me watching videos causes his torrents to become slow? what about online gaming? what activities on the internet i should avoid while his torrents are working?

thx in advance, will gift steam points for good answers

You should try the Hardware and OS forum.

:winterbunny2023:
Tristin Dec 27, 2023 @ 4:02pm 
Yeah you watching video can slow down other user's network usage. Afterall, you both share the bandwidth.

Same goes for online gaming. If your roommate is using lot of bandwidth, you might want to wait playing online games that require your quick actions.

This is really no brainer question. Are you baiting for something or looking for some non-obivous answers? Are you expecting funny answer, to give points to?

:lunar2019deadpanpig:
Originally posted by Tristin:
Yeah you watching video can slow down other user's network usage. Afterall, you both share the bandwidth.

Same goes for online gaming. If your roommate is using lot of bandwidth, you might want to wait playing online games that require your quick actions.

This is really no brainer question. Are you baiting for something or looking for some non-obivous answers? Are you expecting funny answer, to give points to?

:lunar2019deadpanpig:

no im serious.
watching videos while gaming online never slowed my games down. and i vaguely remember people telling me that online gaming doesn't take up much bandwidth so i need to know for sure how badly it slows my friend's torrents

also, if both our internet usage fight for bandwidth how come i don't feel my online games or videos slowing down when i use them while he is torrenting?
Last edited by JolyJew СлаваУкраине; Dec 27, 2023 @ 4:18pm
Kargor Dec 27, 2023 @ 4:19pm 
Originally posted by JolyJew СлаваУкраине:
i have a roomate that frequently downloads videos with torrents, and he complains that they are slowing down recently.

is it possible that me watching videos causes his torrents to become slow? what about online gaming? what activities on the internet i should avoid while his torrents are working?

Of course. His piracy stuff is taking up bandwidth, and that's limited. Your video is taking up bandwidth too, so... he'll get less of it.
ReBoot Dec 27, 2023 @ 4:39pm 
Originally posted by JolyJew СлаваУкраине:
Originally posted by Tristin:
Yeah you watching video can slow down other user's network usage. Afterall, you both share the bandwidth.

Same goes for online gaming. If your roommate is using lot of bandwidth, you might want to wait playing online games that require your quick actions.

This is really no brainer question. Are you baiting for something or looking for some non-obivous answers? Are you expecting funny answer, to give points to?

:lunar2019deadpanpig:

no im serious.
watching videos while gaming online never slowed my games down. and i vaguely remember people telling me that online gaming doesn't take up much bandwidth so i need to know for sure how badly it slows my friend's torrents

also, if both our internet usage fight for bandwidth how come i don't feel my online games or videos slowing down when i use them while he is torrenting?
Chances are, he's being dramatic. Request speed readings with timespamps. Then you can correlate your online activity.
Tristin Dec 27, 2023 @ 4:57pm 
Originally posted by JolyJew СлаваУкраине:
Originally posted by Tristin:
Yeah you watching video can slow down other user's network usage. Afterall, you both share the bandwidth.

Same goes for online gaming. If your roommate is using lot of bandwidth, you might want to wait playing online games that require your quick actions.

This is really no brainer question. Are you baiting for something or looking for some non-obivous answers? Are you expecting funny answer, to give points to?

:lunar2019deadpanpig:

no im serious.
watching videos while gaming online never slowed my games down. and i vaguely remember people telling me that online gaming doesn't take up much bandwidth so i need to know for sure how badly it slows my friend's torrents

also, if both our internet usage fight for bandwidth how come i don't feel my online games or videos slowing down when i use them while he is torrenting?
Ok, I get the situation now.

Generally, data packets have priority that router sets. Most routers will likely place video streaming and gaming on higher priority.

This is the reason you may not feel slowdown. Hence your roommate will take the hit on less priority, slowing his/her downloads when you are watching video (unlikely for gaming, like you said doesn't take as much bandwidth).

But taking into account that your roommate is torrenting, it doesn't guarantee high speed for him/her unless there's enough seed and high speed data providing users. So it may not be entirely your fault.
You watching ytube stream whatnot is less likely to be largely impactful.

To speedup your router overall, you want to disable bandwidth load-balancing (I think that's what it was called), as it reserves big chunk of bandwidth so that it can balance bandwidth distribution between users. The amount of chunk it takes may really defeat the purpose tbh. But may be required for network where certain user(s) are uncontrollable of how much bandwidth they eat up (likely your roommate).

Additionally, your roommate torrenting, means high chances of malware attacks to his/her PC and to router, which effects network speed overall.

So to conlcusion,
Originally posted by ReBoot:
Chances are, he's being dramatic.
...
Last edited by Tristin; Dec 27, 2023 @ 5:02pm
GloriousZote Dec 27, 2023 @ 5:12pm 
A roommate, huh..?
Electric Cupcake Dec 27, 2023 @ 5:13pm 
If you're not VPN tunneling, the ISP probably will throttle torrent traffic.

Or, the tracker servers might not like you for one reason or another and not let peers connect.
Last edited by Electric Cupcake; Dec 27, 2023 @ 5:30pm
Schrute_Farms_B&B Dec 27, 2023 @ 5:17pm 
Apparently someone needs a lesson and quick tutorial in how torrents work.
Looking up seeders and leechers as well as P2P should do the trick for starters.
ʙᴜɴ.ᴇ Dec 27, 2023 @ 5:18pm 
also torrents can slow down when theres lack of active seeders and when seeders have limited their download speeds meaning you can only download their segment of the file by what speed they set, a lot of people running many seeds limit their speeds so their connection remains stable.

because you need to remember when downloading a torrented file, you are not downloading a file from a server but many small segments of the file from other peoples computers.

its very common for download speeds to fluctuate as a result.
A&A Dec 27, 2023 @ 5:22pm 
It depends:
How fast is your internet
How much do you download
How much he can download per second
How much can all seeders and pears upload per second
What are his specs and does it cause any bottleneck

and so on.
Last edited by A&A; Dec 27, 2023 @ 5:31pm
Adversary Dec 27, 2023 @ 5:29pm 
Originally posted by JolyJew СлаваУкраине:
i have a roomate that frequently downloads videos with torrents, and he complains that they are slowing down recently.

is it possible that me watching videos causes his torrents to become slow? what about online gaming? what activities on the internet i should avoid while his torrents are working?

thx in advance, will gift steam points for good answers
Think of it like moving a couch from one room to another. Typically you're going to have to pick up the couch and tilt it sideways while you're carrying it just to get it through the doorframe.

Any and all online activity will take up a portion of your bandwidth. Doesn't matter whether it's upstream or downstream. If he's seeding, that will also slow things down. If you're doing anything at all whatsoever with the internet, that will also slow things down.

Hell, you could have some schmuck piggybacking on your connection via the WiFi or via some backdoor or possibly a RAT - remote access trojan - , or your ISP could be throttling the connection because you or more likely he is using too much bandwidth or you're unfortunate enough to be using Comcast. In either case that will also slow it down.

Course if you've got a backdoor or a RAT then you've got bigger issues.
76561198356019466 Dec 27, 2023 @ 5:30pm 
I've heard that watching porn does, but I wouldn't know personally.
Some guy that knows a friend of mine said it did.
George Washington Dec 27, 2023 @ 5:41pm 
Why are you downloading large torrent files?
Originally posted by Adversary:
Originally posted by JolyJew СлаваУкраине:
i have a roomate that frequently downloads videos with torrents, and he complains that they are slowing down recently.

is it possible that me watching videos causes his torrents to become slow? what about online gaming? what activities on the internet i should avoid while his torrents are working?

thx in advance, will gift steam points for good answers
Think of it like moving a couch from one room to another. Typically you're going to have to pick up the couch and tilt it sideways while you're carrying it just to get it through the doorframe.

Any and all online activity will take up a portion of your bandwidth. Doesn't matter whether it's upstream or downstream. If he's seeding, that will also slow things down. If you're doing anything at all whatsoever with the internet, that will also slow things down.

Hell, you could have some schmuck piggybacking on your connection via the WiFi or via some backdoor or possibly a RAT - remote access trojan - , or your ISP could be throttling the connection because you or more likely he is using too much bandwidth or you're unfortunate enough to be using Comcast. In either case that will also slow it down.

Course if you've got a backdoor or a RAT then you've got bigger issues.

ok thx.
but how much is different activity affects the bandwidth? is online gaming the same as watching youtube?
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Date Posted: Dec 27, 2023 @ 3:57pm
Posts: 18