Torrents and Shaw highspeed 5mbps vs extreme 10mbps internet
 

I use shaw highspeed 5mbps and have been using a router to hook up my laptop and desktop. When any one computer downloads using torrent, the internet will become extremely slow for both laptop and desktop (30-45seconds just to load google.ca). I tested this with 3 different routers and 3 different torrent programs - all the same outcome. If I were to switch to shaw extreme 10mbps, would this solve my torrent problem?

no, but your torrents will download faster with the 10mb

What would solve this hogging of bandwidth problem?

set priorities/rules within the router. this has nothing to do with ur shaw's internet but more with the way the router is set up and handling the bandwidth.

it all depends how much bandwidth ur bt is using.

if u got a 5mb line and u use up all 5mb, of course its slow. then when u get a 10mb line, and ur bt still uses up 10mb, then your website will still be slow, but your BT will download faster...

Your problem could be caused by a lack of upload speed rather than download speed. If either one is close to the limits, everything will slow down. It is actually easier to reach the cap on upload than download. That is why there is a setting in utorrent for upload but no download setting.

The thing is, even when one computer is downloading (and uploading) slowly using torrent at 50kb/s, the effect is still present to all connected computers - extreme network slowness.

Does DL-615 have a setting to limit each connected computer 50/50 bandwidth?

Hopefully, you have QoS (Quality of Service) configuration available on the router. That can be setup to give priority to various services.

I run a third-party firmware called DDWRT on my WRT54G as it automatically flushes old timed out connections after say 5 minutes instead of having it run continuously on stock firmware. It's useful if you run a lot of P2P.

I currently have Shaw Xtreme-I, and my average torrent speed maxes out at about 1.3MB/s, upload caps around 120KB/s

Could be caused by having too many connections in your BT dlient settings.

And don't set all the max upload/download speeds at max. I always put a cap on them.

Thank you everybody for their replies. I shall research more on configuring my router. Much appreciated :)

Torrents are really good at crippling your connection. I've had instances where I'm downloading at like 10kbps and my internet is slow. It's not how much bandwidth is being used, it's how many connections are taken up.

Turn off DHT in your torrent program, as well.

^^^
Most probably the case. Lower the number of global connections in your bitorrent client. If you have more connections than your router can handle, your router will bog down.

Of if you're using uTorrent, use the speed guide and set your upload limit to approx. 80% of your max.

I recommend getting uTorrent and setting upload limit to 10 kb/s. I do this all the time. One time I forgot to do it, and my net was slow as hell.