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Why do torrent download faster in Windows?


MaaseyRacer
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I rarely download torrents. However every now and then there is something I was to grab via torrent. I have been noticing that my PC usually grabs torrents quickly compared to my mac so I started a test.

 

Test subject... My Hackintosh. Dual Booting with Windows XP Media center (SP3) and Mac OS 10.5.6. Both OS's have the same IP address and the same port forwarded to them from my Airport Extreme Base Station. Both OS's connected through my DWA-542. Torrents downloaded at separate times. I am also going to test this on my MacBook Pro next week to see if there is any difference.

 

I used the same torrent to see how long it took.

 

The results. Mac OS over a day with a top speed of 80kB/s.

 

Win XP took 6 hours.

 

I then tried some smaller torrents. Windows grabbed them in seconds to 3 minutes with uTorrent and Transmission took upwards of 15 to 30 mins.

 

What is up with this? Am I doing something wrong? Anyone else notice this?

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I have been grabbing, I have been using bit torrent as a quick file grab for my own personal files. I am seeding off my work computer and grabbing them at home. Windows uTorrent grabs them so much faster, in windows it takes about 5 mins to grab these images. In mac OS it takes almost 30.

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I don't know what the hell it is, but I agree.

 

Downloading torrents with Windows (XP or Vista) is so much faster than with Mac OS X (Tiger or Leopard) for me also. I just don't get it. It must be something with the networking (TCP/IP) and how it is integrated with the system. Microsoft must do it better or something... Who knows...

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I use uTorrent in Windows and Transmission in OS X.

 

I really do get better download speeds in OS X.

 

I did a test the same day you asked this question. I downloaded Ubuntu in both Windows and OS X. Using uTorrent in Windows, I got an average of 300-400k, whereas on Mac OS, I struck with 600-800k.

 

Its just the luck of the draw.

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No, i've noticed exactly the same. I mean speeds are "ok" according to transmission, but... it's damn f.. slow comparing to windows, i can't even download one HD720 movie over night. And i'm using private trackers, so no chance for 'probably there are no seeds or something'.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Are you guys cribbing bout the few KB a torrent file is or the end result?

Torrent always take some time to get going. Its like business, start out small, end up big. Much like Apple.

The more MB you get in your files, the faster the download gets. You dont get 4MB speeds out of the box.

 

And there is never going to be one time when we could complete a test such as this as it all depends on seeders, time, where you are in the "loop" and a few others things which escape my mind right now.

 

Think Mark. Torrent Pro B)

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  • 2 weeks later...

We're all sitting here talking about what client and OS is better and what have you. Has nobody concluded that it could just depend on the state of the sharing? Number of peers, and whether or not they're sharing? Whether or not concurrently running torrents are connecting to the same peers? There's hundreds of network factors that affect the transfer, maybe the trackers even. O_o Is it not possible?

 

Also, I agree with the above. Check your port forwarding settings.

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I can easily pull 2-4MB/s off Transmission in OSX, up your number of connections (Prefrences -> Peers).. Ive got 300 max, 150 per torrent max and works well for me..

 

make sure your ports are open, if not it severely limits who you can talk to..

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  • 2 weeks later...

I my experience torrents are much slower in my mac than on my pc running vista. I recently bought an iMac and I am running Leopard with the newest updates. I have tried utorrent and transmission, I have opened all the ports and also changed identical settings of maximum connections and maximum upload speed. Both my PC and Mac run on the same wireless router, and the router is manually configured in port forwarding in both cases. I tried to download identical torrents on both my machines one at a time, starting on my mac waiting for it about 10mins. Then changing to the PC and I did the same thing (same torrent). I repeated this several times just to make sure it wasnt a one time happening when the mac was slower. But in all cases the mac client was about half the speed as the PC.

 

Strange? Now I have installed Parallells desktop on my iMac and I am running XP Home and then downloaded utorrent 1.82 (PC version). Now the torrents are running smooth and fast even on my mac! I think this says something about the torrent clients that is available for mac today, or is it maybe something with OS X?

 

What do you think?

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