lame question: dl and ul speeds

I have a stupid question: does my upload influence my download speed? I have a 512Kbits cable connection with max upload of 256: if I set my BT client to upload 32KB, will my max dl speed be reduced (to 32KB) or not?

It seems it can in some cases, but in others my 4kbs-UL cap can get me 150kbs-DL. So I'm going with a NO. It might be tracker-dependent, though. However, take a big note on this: the larger your upload pipe is running, the thinner your download will be able to. This is a fact independent of BitTorrent. It's best to cap your upload during the DL and release it as a seed.

the way tcpip works is if your upload/download is close to being saturated, the speed of both will suffer. When I had 256k upload I wouldn't go over 18-20K lest my download suffered

I always thought thal UL and DL were independent on a cable connection, unlike ADSL.

No, because of how TCP/IP works. If you download something, you often have to send packets to the sender that you're ready for more (in other words, upload something). Same applies in the opposite direction.

You can get away with it when using UDP, but most higher protocols don't.

>>5
Yeah, but nobody uses UDP for large amounts of data transmission, it's too unreliable.

I thought TCP/IP was built on top of UDP

>>1
Try to determine whether you have separate DL/UL channels or not. How? By downloading a large file that gets near your maximum download speed, then sending an email with a long attachment or whatever, and seeing if it affects the download a great deal (single channel) or not (separate channels). By your description I think you do have separate channels.

For single channel: set UL and DL to a reasonable rate. This depends on your ISP, but try 28 KB up and 32 KB down. Note that not uploading so you can download more won't help; your BitTorrent download speed is proportional to your upload speed, and the more you upload, the faster you download.

For separate channels: set DL to the maximum, UL to 85% of the maximum.

Again, this depends on your ISP; experiment with it and see what gets you the highest download speed.

>>7
I think >>6 meant straight UDP as opposed to the full-featured TCP.

>>9
Yes. Yes I did.

TCP/IP sure as fuck isn't built on top of UDP. TCP uses IP. UDP uses IP.

If anything, TCP and UDP are "built on top" of IP, and have nothing to do with each other.

The TCP/IP stack is a surprisingly commonly misunderstood concept, when it's as simple as

IP--TCP|UDP

with some services thrown in both interacting with IP and your choice of link protocol.

Imma testin ma tripcode