Internet Connection Being Inconsistent

[Ryushii]

I have had this same linksys router for about 4 years, and while I have had to reboot it incalcuable times, recently it has been acting extremely screwy. My home network is security protected, of course, and it includes 1 laptop (connected by wifi), 1 ps2 (connected by ethernet), and 1 regular computer (connected by a router reciever). The problems began soon after I signed up for blackcats and started torrenting, which was strange, because I have used other torrent websites before without any effect on my connection. Basically, since then I have found it impossibile to stay connected for more than short periods of time (about 30-45 min at most), which is terrible when trying to play FFXI. After every period, my internet stops working long enough to kick me off AIM/FFXI/FB chat, and normal browsing doesn't work for about 30 seconds. I tried stopping the torrents when I'm on FFXI or even just using my computer, but that only helped slightly. The big kicker has been this new torrent I've been seeding, of about 17.2 GB in size. Since I started running that torrent, my connection consistency has gotten even worse, EVEN when I stop the torrent. Further note: I recently had to reset my router to factory settings and reconfigure it. The only things I did to it was add security, change it to PPPoE, and change the network name. Is there possibly anything I could change in the router settings to help fix the problem?

Another not quite related question: this torrent I'm currently running, the 17.2GB one, is having trouble uploading. Everyone once in a while, I'll see it uploading, but usually it's not, and it usually has 10-20 other seeders, and anywhere from 1-9 peers. Peers means the downloaders, correct? So shouldn't the torrent always be uploading to the leechers, and not just rarely?

Sorry for the long post, but I have no idea why my internet is being screwy all of a sudden.

[Cephius]

Are you capping your download and upload speeds? Especially upload, if you don't cap these and your torrents clog up your pipeline you won't be able to do anything net-related without it being really, really laggy. Most torrent programs allow you to set caps on how fast you upload and download. If you aren't already, I'd do that.

Also, peers/leechers don't always mean downloaders. Some are known as partial seeders, which means they've only downloaded part of the torrent and are seeding that. Such as downloading a few episodes out of a season pack. These people are technically leechers, and they show up as peers, but they aren't actually downloading anything. This doesn't happen much on blackcats though.

If you still have problems, it might just be your router. Try updating to the most recent firmware, or testing with a different one to see if its your router, your ISP, or something else.