Help! BitTorrents killed my internet!

[GuyInDogSuit]

Bloody hell, I can't seem to download anything nowadays... and I've had it! I leave the PC on to download, only to come back to find that the connection dropped who-knows-when, I don't care, but nothing got finished. At first I thought it was just the torrents. Then it happened with eMule links. I've tried Azureus, eDonkey, eMule, Direct Connect, AND Shareaza. It's the same results with any of those apps. Pretty much the only P2P app I can use now is Kazaa Lite++, no idea why. It's really annoying 'cause I have to power cycle the modem every time it drops, and I don't have time to babysit the damned thing. Dunno if it's my computer, my ISP (Adelphia, *shudder*) or my router settings. The hardware I'm using includes a Motorola Surfboard cable modem and a LinkSys 2.4 GHz Wireless-B router, though my computer is directly connected to it via ethernet. My machine is running Windows XP 2002 Service Pack 2 on a 2 GHz AMD Sempron with 768 MB RAM. I've installed almost all the updates, but disabled the firewall. Any suggestions?

[Winged 2.0]

Never heard of something like this before. Forwarding a few ports is what I would recommend. Mix the ports up. Maybe your ISP is blocking all the p2p ports to avoid legal heat.

[GuyInDogSuit]

Yeah, I figured they'd pull that crap, and I even changed some things around, specified certain ports for each prog, and still nothing.

[Winged 2.0]

Did you change the port setting within the prog from say 21 to 35324?

[pooman]

So you only lose connection when running anything besides Kazaa lite? Have you tried power cycling your router as well?

If you lose connection every so often, maybe you have to have a techie from Adelphia come out and look at the wires and stuff. Loose/dead/worn down wires would cause problems.

[polobunny]

I'm pretty sure it's your modem/router being nasty. Try to limit the number of connections in eMule and not to use Kadmelia (KAD), limit connections for your bittorrent software too. Alot of routers are known to have problems when they need to make alot of connections at the same time.
KAD requests alot, same thing for BT.

[GuyInDogSuit]

Did you change the port setting within the prog from say 21 to 35324?

Not that specific one.... Would that help?

So you only lose connection when running anything besides Kazaa lite? Have you tried power cycling your router as well?

If you lose connection every so often, maybe you have to have a techie from Adelphia come out and look at the wires and stuff. Loose/dead/worn down wires would cause problems.

Power cycling the modem and router is something I'm very familiar with, as I've had to do it quite often. I've discovered that my connection will stay on for days, weeks, even, as long as I limit my downloading to Kazaa Lite or via http with Firefox. My wires are also in prime condition, save for the fact they're dusty and spackled with paint from the renovations on my room, and they're tightly plugged in.

I'm pretty sure it's your modem/router being nasty. Try to limit the number of connections in eMule and not to use Kadmelia (KAD), limit connections for your bittorrent software too. Alot of routers are known to have problems when they need to make alot of connections at the same time.
KAD requests alot, same thing for BT.

Is KAD something that is specifically used in eMule? I don't remember seeing that in the options, but I'll check it. And the thought had occurred to me before that perhaps it was making too many connections at once, and I've tried to limit those, but I may have to be more strict with the limits, because it didn't help before.

[SegNin]

From BitComet's FAQ:

What is the 4226 issue in Windows XP SP2?

Windows XP SP2 limits the number of TCP connection attempts to 10 (quite small ). If there are more concurrent TCP connection attempts, Windows generates a warning: EventID 4226: TCP/IP has reached the security limit imposed on the number of concurrent TCP connect attempts. You can go to Xp's Admin tool, event viewer, look in system tab and notice tcpip entry (with yellow warning sign). The detailed discription can be found in Microsoft documentation: Event 4226, EVENT_TCPIP_TCP_CONNECT_LIMIT_REACHED (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/event...=5.1.2600.2180)

In Windows XP SP2 there are only 10 concurrent TCP connection attempts possible, while in SP1 it has not been limited. (A connection attemp is a query to a computer, if it accept the TCP connection or not. If the computer is for example no more existent, it will be waited for a few seconds, until a timeout occurs and the connection attemp get canceled. )
[edit]
Do I need to patch tcpip.sys for 4226 issue in Windows XP SP2?

BitComet 0.55 or above can work correctly under Windows XP SP2 without patch. However, limiting the connection attempt by the system may result in a slower speed at the beginning of downloading, since fewer peers can be connected at the same time. For those behind a NAT or firewall, the thrid-party [ http://www.lvllord.de/ patch] for tcpip.sys to fix that SP2 issue is still recommended.

[GuyInDogSuit]

I am aware of the TCP issues with SP2 and already fixed those. This problem existed even before I upgraded to SP2.