Thread: Why does torrent client show U/L or D/L with no active torrents?

Does anyone know why, when there are no active torrents, and have not been for some time, I will sometimes be sitting there, watching there be like 1.5 KBps of upload, download, or both, for sometimes up to like, 20 seconds or more at a time?



Thanks

By chance do you have DHT enabled? Utorrent will still act as a node even when no torrents are active with DHT enabled and send out and recieve the 1.5KBps of data.

I never faced this issue are you having any torrent from public tracker in it..or maybe demonoid???...though sometime it actually use little bit at the start I guess it's just so that it can check the seed and leeches...

Originally Posted by staffrodore

By chance do you have DHT enabled? Utorrent will still act as a node even when no torrents are active with DHT enabled and send out and recieve the 1.5KBps of data.

nope not enabled

Hi mtguy8787

I think that the small amount of overall UL DL data is caused by something called 'BitTorrent protocol overhead'.

I searched a bit on the subject and found this on a Utorrent FAQ:

1. Why does it show a download speed of .1-.2 KiB/s when seeding?
   
   µTorrent shows BitTorrent protocol overhead when displaying speeds; this is normal.

The FAQ can be seen here.

I know that this is not the exact same question as you are asking. But this indicates that the 'torrent protocal' needs to send and recieve data, to connect to other peers, and check if they are evailable.
This means that some of your UL/DL speed is used for keeping track of data and peers, and NOT for the files uploading or downloading.
That means that a little amount of UL/DL can appear, even if you have no active torrents.

I myself is not an ecpert on 'BitTorrent protocol overhead', but try google it, i you want to know more.

Hope this helps, in clearing things out.

Cheers, 20011328