How do I limit the upload speed of Transmission client to below 5kB/s?

Question

I want to restrict the upload speed of my transmission client to 1kB/s, is it possible?

What changes do I need to make to lower the upload speed?

Solution

Transmission:

Edit-> Preferences -> Transmission Preferences -> Speed Limits/Alternative Speed Limits

Under Speed Limits/Alternative Speed Limits you can set what the max speed your data needs to be uploaded.

Alternate way

open gedit $HOME/.config/transmission-daemon/settings.json

"speed-limit-up": 5, "speed-limit-up-enabled": true

You can set "speed-limit-up" to your desired number.

Comments

[Ankit]

great, if I lower the upload speed will it actually make my downloads faster?

[devav2]

Nope. Not really. It doesn't affect your download rate.

[Ankit]

thanks.. does this mean that i will get maximum download speed (according to my bandwidth) irrespective of the whatever upload limit I have.

[devav2]

Your download wont get affected. If you are worried that your upload is eating up the data limits then in that case you can set the ratios. I use ktorrent. Why don't you give a try to ktorrent or miro, which provides much features.

[fdierre]

@devav2, I beg to disagree. If his upload limit is set too high, he might be using too much bandwidth for transmitting data (and on some DSL upload bandwidth is very scarce!), hence delaying the transmission of TCP ACK for the data he is downloading, therefore slowing down his own download speed.

[devav2]

@fdierre I agree to your point. But most ISP provides higher download limit while upload limit will be always less so in that case it shouldn't affect downloading. Ankit, Please use speedtest.net to check your upload/download rate.

[fdierre]

@devav2 that's exactly the point! If the download bandwidth is much higher that the upload bandwidth, then you will need a significant percentage of your upload bandwidth just for sending ACK to the data you're downloading, and so you must be very careful with uploading other data. Been there, done that: I can choke my ADSL download speed anytime, by just not setting an upload limit. :-D