Torrents and file sharing

[#1]

I've noticed some strange activity over the last day or so where I would lose my internet connection and need to reboot the router while downloading a file from a legitimate file sharing site. This happened every time I tried to do so, although not straight away, but before the file had finished. It seemed strange and I stopped attempting to get it after a while, but let it go at just some anomaly. But today, when attempting to download something else via torrent, I made no connection through my client at all. Not the slow speed one might find at certain times of the day in the past - but nothing, no connection whatsoever. Has anyone else found this? Is there something going on here that we ought to know about?

[#2]

Often routers fall over when there are too many incoming connections - when I used to torrent, they would slow down to a crawl then keel over 
If it is a very popular torrent, maybe try limiting your incoming connections and upload bandwidth.

[#3]

Yes, I understand. This is different though. I am not making a connection AT ALL. Nothing, not seeing a thing. Even if it needed something like what you say, it would still show a connection, and this is on any torrent I try (for test purposes). Something seeded 300 to 3 always makes a conection. No, this feels like something else. The majority of the trackers show connection failed!
EDIT: ok, I found something that is downloading, but something isn't right. And what about the HTTP download causing the router to need rebooting?

[#4]

Find the setting in the torrent client to reduce the number of maximum connections, at a guess its too high and is swamping your router.

[#5]

It has been set to 60 forever and never acted like this. So I changed it to 30 - no difference.When I look at the individual connections being made to the trackers - they have all failed.

[#6]

Try another router if you can, would suspect its starting to show signs of abuse cause of this.  They run 24/7 and get hot plus this weather doesn't help so could be a capacitor has or is about to blow

[#7]

Don't have another I can try - this is a PN router and only a year old. Wouldn't it affect general internet use though?

[#8]

Perhaps someone from PN could comment on this?
I can download normally everywhere else, like Macupdate, etc, except anything torrent. Can this really have something to do with the physical router? I'm no expert, far from it, but it doesn't seem likely to me.

[#9]

Ah . . .  when in doubt restart the computer!!
All's well now. Don;t know what happened but the restart did the trick. Sometimes I forget the simplest is often the best.

[#10]

Ha ha - excellent.
Glad you got it sorted

[#11]

Hi,
It's probably down to the number of connections being made and then not being closed down properly. If you do a netstat from the command line if it happens again you'll probably see 100s or maybe even thousands of open sessions that haven't been closed down properly. The torrent client is probably opening them and not closing them so the router keeps the mapping open, restarting the router clears the route but only temporarily.