[PLUG] Is it Comcast or Motorola?

[John Jason Jordan]

I have Comcast cable at home, connected with a Motorola SB5100
SurfModem. The network is ethernet; all components are rated cat6.

I download distros via torrent using Ktorrent 3.1.2 on Intrepid. I like
to set Ktorrent to allow a lot of connections per torrent because it
increases the download speed. I also like to leave it running until the
share ratio is at least 1.00 (which means that I have uploaded as many
bytes as I have downloaded). I do this with my desktop computer.

The other day I upgraded my laptop to Intrepid. After the progress
window said it had finished downloading all the new packages I started
downloading four versions of Kubuntu on the desktop, because I figured I
no longer needed any bandwidth for the laptop upgrade. The maximum
allowable connections per torrent was set to 500. In the middle of
installing all the new packages the laptop upgrade halted on
flashplayer. Looking at the terminal I could see that it was
downloading flash. I didn't realize that it hadn't really finished
downloading *all* the new packages. It had stalled on the flash
download. Looking at Ktorrent on the desktop I could see that it had
also stalled.

After several minutes of scratching my head in panic over the stalled
upgrade I decided to power cycle the modem. A minute or two after
plugging it back in the network was back and the laptop upgrade
proceeded normally. Ktorrent also started back up.

Since then I have had to power cycle the modem every hour or so to
restore the connection. I have set Ktorrent down to allow only 50
connections per torrrent, but I still lose the connection, even with
only four torrents running. If I leave Ktorrent on Pause the connection
stays up perfectly.

So I am wondering if it is Comcast or the modem. Comcast swears they
are no longer throttling torrents. (Now they just charge you extra if
you exceed 100 GB per month.) Every recent discussion that Google can
find leads me to believe they are telling the truth. The modem is
several years old. Maybe all the bits that have passed through it have
finally eroded its little wires. :)

Or maybe there is something about having too many connections that gets
the modem flummoxed.

It could also be Ktorrent, but that seems less likely to me. It is a
new version that came with Intrepid, but I have been using Ktorrent for
years without a problem.

Does anyone here have any experience that could shed light on the
issue? Suggestions for troubleshooting?