What and how much to seed?

[loic]

Hi All, I just started using uTorrent, or BitTorrent for that matter, and it's very good. What's the recommendation for how many downloaded files to seed? For example, I have 7 files that completed downloading: how many do I seed? All?

Right now uTorrent is only seeding one of them, the rest is queued. Is that a good policy? If I register on torrent sites that have ratio requirements, will that cause me problems?

Also, if I seed too many files, will that choke up my upload speeds for my current downloads?

Thanks!

[Ultima]

The Speed Guide tells all. Seeding too much doesn't necessarily mean choking your upload speed unless you don't have a proper limit set -- once again, something the Speed Guide will set properly for you, if you follow it properly.

[Switeck]

Typically, you should have no more than about 1 torrent seeding/downloading PER 5 KB/sec upload speed you're giving out. Otherwise you're only uploading in appearance -- as your tiny upload speed PER torrent gets lost in the noise. (and can create large amounts of wasted data for downloaders!)

Stop a few torrents after they reach something over 1:1 sharing ratio. A good rule of thumb is if it's something you like...and want more of...keep sharing it in preferance to just "what's this?...I'll download it and see!"

Also, try to help the torrents with very few seeds. If you're the only one sharing the whole torrent and you leave, most likely nobody else will ever complete that torrent.

[loic]

sounds good. my upload speed is 4 kB/s so i guess i'll keep the number of seeding/downloading torrents at 1.