DWK' date=' a lot of car accidents stem from drivers stupidity. That's why car manufacturers install air-bags, seat belts, ABS's etc. And it's not always user stupidity because in many cases, the trackers are already in the torrents. Designers have to design stable products for everyone (including drivers, pedestrians, users, trackers) and I don't see a reason to blame the users.[/quote'] Safety mechs don't make users less stupid, just less prone to dicking up the works. Filtering isn't free, bandwidth and CPU are still consumed, and that hits the wallet as well. Ugly! It's been pointed out to me on bt.org that 404's may be generated by middlemen. Still' date=' I think a higher timeout or not even bothering would be appropriate, especially if [i']plenty of other trackers are functional. Beating off a dead horse the original multitracker spec was to (basically) hit up only one tracker at a time, but the "solution" to a large chunk of peers potentially being crap? Hit a tracker in every tier, no matter how many tiers exist!