Tired of slow downloads? Can’t wait to get your hands on the latest episode of Lost? Well fret no more! I discovered an overlooked method of getting faster speeds!

Before I reveal the secret, I want to make sure we have the basics down first. You have to open up the port for your torrent client and enable UPnP. If you have already done that, then move on to the next paragraph. You will want to open up a port if you are behind a router; access the router and port forward the same exact number as configured in your torrent client’s settings. As for UPnP, just look for the word somewhere in your modem or router and make sure its enabled.

Now for the secret method. You may not like it, you may already know it, but here it is.

Turn on your computer before office hours.

I woke up at 6:30am today (I was super tired early last night) and went on my computer to do business as usual, then i noticed this.

At first I thought “Oh, cool. 20K/sec. That’s pretty cool”. Then I looked closely and screamed “OMGWTFBBQ 20MB/sec!!!”

I have been getting bad speeds (read: less than 10KB/sec) during the day and before midnight. I have a feeling that it is because there are less people eating bandwidth in the wee hours in the morning, and the torrent seeders (who are on the other side of the world) are active then, too.

Just in case the same thing does not work for you, let me give you some info on my internet connection. I use Streamyx and live in Bandar Utama. I do not use any special DNS settings. I do not subscribe to Streamyx’s faster broadband plan, just the normal one. I have an Aztech modem router (which I do not recommend, buy a Linksys instead). I did not set any special configurations on my computer, I just opened the port.

I cannot promise that you will get speeds like I did. Also, the seeders for the specific torrents I used may be particularly faster than others. Maybe my torrent client has a bug that shows you insane numbers, but I swear to you I did not forge this picture. Nonetheless, I can tell you for certain that your downloads will be faster than the rest of the day, even if by a little bit.

Now share with us, good internet people of Kuala Lumpur, if this method works for you.

P/S: While I was typing this post, my speeds gradually increased. It is now up to 44MB/sec, 38 for upload.

Edit: Sorry to keep your hopes up, but I can confirm that the numbers are indeed due to a bug on Transmission. I restarted the application and it does not go to megabytes anymore. However, I am still getting better speeds than normal. So try it anyway and tell us if it works for you.

Now that I have returned to Kuala Lumpur, I am now further pursuing my musical interests. As a mark on my journey, I have created a new band page on Facebook:

Crowd of None Facebook Page

You can become a fan if you like. At the moment I only have one track available, but I will come up with more in time. Stay tuned.