How to make uTorrent faster?

Getting a faster uTorrent by tweaking your ratio might seem odd to you, unless you look into how torrents work a little bit. Torrents use what is called a "tit-for-tat" mechanism of controlling speed. Trackers and peers try to adjust things, making sure that people who upload more are able to download more. This Wikipedia link mentions the problem inherent in this, though. Most of us have asymmetric connections – that is, connections that are faster to download but slower to upload. Under perfect conditions with a maxed upload and download speed, you'd never get near a 1:1 ratio (which is what torrents tend to try to push you toward.)

If you're not near 1:1, you'll begin getting "choked" by your peers, limiting how much data they send you, trying to wait until your ratio is higher before they send you more.

Conversely, if your ratio is high, they will try to send you lots of data – a high ratio means you distribute data more, so you keep the torrent moving quickly.

So what can you do if you want a faster uTorrent? How can you get your ratio high, without having to upgrade your connection, or buy an expensive seedbox account somewhere?

Torrent Ratio Keeper solves the problem for you, in a very clever way. Whenever your torrent client reports how much it's uploaded, TRK steps in and adjusts that report, bringing the amount to a much higher level. It can also report that you've downloaded less, increasing your ratio in two ways. If your ISP has caps on your monthly bandwidth, or charges you for your traffic, this is especially attractive. Saving traffic equals saving money, in that case.

Seeing the higher ratio, your peers find you more attractive to send data to. The end result is that your ratio is left much higher, and you get faster uTorrent downloads.

All this, from a simple and unobtrusive program, is pretty impressive. It also features some advanced options, such as "Seeder Mode" which let you appear to be a seed, never reporting any of your download traffic. "Emulate Upload Problems" lets you never report any upload traffic. Between the two, you get complete control over how the tracker and other peers see you.

TRK's "Smart Traffic Multiply" option (on, by default) will even keep the percentage it boosts your ratio by just slightly random, so that your traffic looks more natural to your peers.

So does it work? Let's see what our final findings were…