BT in Malaysia

Most Internet users love BTing. Unfortunately in Malaysia, the BT activity is limited by the commercial ISPs(Internet Services Provider) in Malaysia especially the most popular ISP in Malaysia which is TMnet. It is known that TMnet have a limited amount of bandwidth to share among thousands or millions of users. BT usually consume a large amount of bandwidth. If every user uses BT, then it may result in giving the ISP a heavy traffic. Finally. everyone gets slow connection and it is unfair for those who did not uses BT. Therefore, TMnet comes out with P2P throttling in order to shape the P2P traffic especially BitTorrent!

Although TMnet is throttling BT, but user can still download from local peers with normal speed. Which means that only download speed are limited from international peers, and there are no influence with local peers. Moreover, upload is not limited by TMnet in the past but now it is which is too bad. The prove can be obtain from http://forum.lowyat.net/index.php?showtopic=380142 . As the same as download that, upload is also not limited for local peers which is mention later in the lowyat forum.

From this site, there are a list of bad ISP listed out that throttling BT. Malaysia is also included in the list.


(Table from www.azureuswiki.com)
From the table, we see that both ISP limit BT bandwidth.
Although it says no about the limitation of bandwidth for excessive usage, but actually it does.
It is proven by one of the Streamyx user who suffur the limitation of bandwidth due to excessive usage of bandwidth. This issue regarding to this matter is from Lowyat forum by CKKwan.

In conclusion, it is very sad that TMnet throttle the BT but some day I hope that Malaysia can give user chances to BT by upgrading their bandwidth and improve their services to make our lifes better. Long lives BT~



Internet References

Bad ISPs - AzureusWiki, [Table, Online], 01 June 2007
URL: http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Bad_ISPs#Malaysia

About BitTorrent influencing the hard drive - PART 2

We have talk about how the BT influence the hard drive. Now we will talk about what to do to minimize the damage done by BT.

1. Set higher Cache
BT have multiple line of download/upload, the Windows usual Cache 512KB is obviously to be not enough. If RAM is higher than 256MB, setting the Cache to a higher value can reduce the hard drive read/write frequency. Usually set at 8MB to 16MB have the best effect. 32MB is also possible if user have higher RAM. To set it, go to Start -> Run -> regedit and then go to this address:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE＼SYSTEM＼CurrentControlSet ＼Control＼Session Manager＼Memory Management＼
After that, find IoPageLock-Limit(If not exists, create new one with type DWord) and set the value of the new Cache.
P.S. Have to enter value in hex format, such as 16MB=4000. It is recommended to make a backup first before modify.

2. Decrease Process Priority
BT uses a lot of CPU and Memory resources, when use it will definitely influence the computer. If user are using Windows 2000/XP, then it can use Windows Task Manager to lower its process priority. Then, even the BT client want to use more resources it will not affect other programs. To do this, use Ctrl+Alt+Del key combination then go to Processes and find the current BT client which is in use and right click -> Set Priority and click Below Normal or Low.

Here is the way we can protect our hard drive
1. Buy better quality hard drive
This is one of the basic solution. Never buy second hand hard drive! Be careful when choosing the right hard drive. If the quality of hard drive is not good, then it is obvious that the hard drive would not live long.

2.Use SATA instead of IDE
Since BT always read/write, therefore it is recommend to use SATA. SATA can read/write faster than IDE. Therefore, will work better when using BT.

3.Remember to always defragment the hard drive occasionally
BT always create pieces of files that may make the hard drive to read slower. Defragment hard drive can speed up the computer and making it last longer. The hard drive won't have to spin as much to find the pieces of files after it is defragmented. Therefore, defragment it occasionally will help to make the hard drive lives longer.

In conclusion, please be careful with your hard drive. Try to change it after used for 2/3 years. Maintenance for hard drive is neccessary to make our hard drive have higher lifespan. Thank you.

The above information is translated and edited by Yong Wen Fei

Original Sources - Internet References
简单设置，BT下载时保护硬盘 - ゞＷǒ眞de愛妳メぢ - 网易博客, [DOC, Online], 31 May 2007 URL: http://blog.163.com/yhtkissmm/blog/static/1165208200662814310/

Is-K.13, BT爱好者论坛 - ~[转帖]害怕BT伤硬盘的都进来!!, [DOC, Online], 31 May 2007
URL: http://bbs.btchina.net/showthread.php?s=b91e0a80a97a748444bf36d19fe57133&threadid=241891

About BitTorrent influencing the hard drive - PART 1

BitTorrent is a good download tools, the more people download, the higher the speed is and is slowly accepted by people. But there is one big problem which is, will BT damage the hard drive?

Everyone knows that BT can provide very high download speed because when downloading at the same time, also provide uploading services to other peers who download the same torrent file. Therefore, the hard drive have to withstand 1 download and N-1 upload(which is you provide download services to other peers) at the same time. If there are Nx10 or Nx100 individual download at the same time, then it will bring very high usage to the hard drive and thus damage the hard drive.

The hard drive have a measurement which is call MTBF (mean time between failures). The MTBF is a rating used in the computer industry that attempts to predict the time between failure. Usually, normal hard drive have MTBF of at least 30000 hours, but the time we use BT is less than this time, so using BT may not have much effect to the hard drive. BUT, using BT in some degree will definitely decrease the hard drive lifetime. Hence, we must be very careful with the time when using BT and also implement some optimization measures so that this influence can be neglected.

In conclusion, please be very careful with BT. Do not ever be too optimistic that BT in very high speed is a good thing or else you will end up regretting that all of your precious data/information lost together with your hard drive which is very bad.

The above information is translated and edited by Yong Wen Fei

Original Sources - Internet References
简单设置，BT下载时保护硬盘 - ゞＷǒ眞de愛妳メぢ - 网易博客, [DOC, Online], 30 May 2007
URL: http://blog.163.com/yhtkissmm/blog/static/1165208200662814310/