Prioritize bit torrent traffic

I would like to know how to prioritize traffic from various applications. Specifically I want to know if there is a way to give web traffic higher priority over bit torrent traffic. OS : Windows XP Browser : Firefox Bittorrent client : uTorrent

Can I somehow shape the traffic such that, when I am browsing, bittorrent traffic gets suppressed (but not completely) and once no web traffic is detected , it is allowed to continue at full speed ?

Try NetBalancer*.

Browse and do any internet activity comfortably even when your download manager or torrent client downloads huge files from internet - just lower their network priority with NetBalancer.

You can use NetBalancer to set download/upload transfer rate priority for any applications and monitor their internet traffic.

*Free version is limited to 5 process priorities/limits at a time. I think 5 is quite enough.

You'll want to look into a setting on your router called QoS (Quality of Service). If your router is capable of supporting 3rd party firmware, I'd suggest DD-WRT. It has an excellent QoS engine among tons of other great features. Bitorrent and HTTP traffic can easily be prioritized with the presets they give you.

See the Services Priority section:

If you want true per application traffic shaping Cfosspeed is a good solution. I agree that the best solution probably is traffic shaping through the router but a router cannot distinguish between applications, just ports.

What you are talking about is called "traffic shaping".

This generally needs to be supported by your router. However, if you want to build your own router at home, pfSense supports traffic shaping.