Total speed of 395kBps on the A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD

Are you having slow speeds for the BitTorrent on the A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD Media Player? Saw quite a handful of discussion regarding the slow speed and decided to tweak the settings a bit. I managed to find some time this evening to toy with the media player. After 15 minutes of digging and tweaking, I managed to clock 395kBps using the BitTorrent on the A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD.

Some information I found:

• BitTorrent program is btpd
• btpd is commonly found in appliances that supports BitTorrent
• btpd on the A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD doesn’t support encryption
• A.C.Ryan had implemented it to run off default port (6881)
• A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD’s web interface doesn’t allow user to change the default BitTorrent port

Personally, I feel that running BitTorrent off default port is a bad idea as most Internet Service Provider (ISP) throttles BitTorrent traffic. Running off default port just makes it easier for ISP to identify and throttle the speed. Therefore, we would want to change this port number to allow BitTorrent to pick up some speed. Another important point to note is that the btpd on the media player doesn’t support encryption. So the BitTorrent traffic can easily be identified by the clever network devices our ISPs have and speed will drop again.

Another point – appliances have limited resources. These media players are not as powerful as our personal computer hence we might wish to optimize the available resources. One way to keep resource usage under control is to limit the number of peers the BitTorrent would connect to. More peers generally means higher speed but more peers definitely means more resources being consumed. Less available resources generally means lower speed. Go figure where is your balance.

In this guide, we will be changing the BitTorrent port to 12345. If you would like to use another port, just replace every instance of 12345 with your own port number. I would be limiting the number of peers to 48. Just change this number to your liking. If you have a router, do remember to do the necessary port-forwarding.

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Took some pictures of the PlayOn!HD Full HD Media Player!

Cant wait to unbox the media player!

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Went down to COMEX 2009 after work today! I arrived there at around 6.30pm and made my way to A.C.Ryan’s booth on level 6. Scanned the booth for the familiar face from yesterday. I think his name is Eugene and he knows the product well. Asked him regarding the availability of the A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD without the bundled hard disks.

“The media player without the hard disk bundled are all sold out”

I was stunned momentarily. It is just day 2 of the computer fair and the media player (without 1TB hard disk) are sold out? Oh man. I should have taken half day leave and came down in the afternoon with my colleague. He got the A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD with wireless N dongle at S$298! Media player at $249 and wireless N dongle at $49 (usual $59)! What a steal!

Think he remember me from yesterday as I asked quite a fair bit of questions. I guessed he sensed that I was quite disappointed. It was then he told me to wait and he approached his boss. After a while, he waved to me. I propped my head over the counter and he offered me a bundle which made me grin from ear to ear. Super good deal!

Paid for the  items and left the place! Thanks Mr Nice A.C.Ryan guy!