Peer Connecting

[kieranmullen]

What exactly is the process of connecting to Peers? What decides you only connect to 4 out of 9 peers or 14 out of 26 peers etc?

Is there any system within utorrent that wil connect to peers that are geographically closer to you first and have better ping times?

Thanks

KM

[Ultima]

No there are no mechanisms that allow µTorrent to connect to people closer to you, and it won't be included, if you planned on requesting after getting that answer.

Normally the other peers decide whether you connect to them or not, though if you reach your connection limit, µTorrent won't connect to any one else either.

[Snapphane]

To make it a bit more clear. You have your upload slots limited and so has everyone as well. Same goes for upload speed and maximum peers (both global and per torrent).

So when you have a swarm of 20 people and only get connected to 5, that means that the other 15 lack the resources to connect to you. Their speed limit may have been reached, they don't have any upload slots and so on. Or as Ultima said, it can be your maximum peer count or other factors in your settings that limits you.

Ping time isn't that important with torrents and speed can be very slow even with people in the same country (see above for reasons). The only chance of getting good speeds is to use private trackers. The better and harder control gives lots more of seeds and many people in private trackers also have faster internet connection. I hardly hit my maximum of 15 megabit on a public tracker, but on a private it's hard not to.

[kieranmullen]

I guess that all makes perfect sense.

How about this... If resources were available and limits not reached... then it would make sense to connect to the one with the lowest ping time or geographically closer first...

of course thinking about it more, I doubt this would be implemented because the users in the US seem to have the best connections and all the files. :-)

[Ultima]

Hardly, every Swedish person (lol I'm not sure if I mean that literally, but it might as well be) has 100mbit lines, whereas people in the US are lucky if they can get their hands on 10-20mbit lines. Anyhow, lower pings does not mean faster speeds, so it doesn't make much difference to connect to people who have lower pings.

[Snapphane]

It seems like a good idea, if not for 2 problems.

Problem 1: Ping isn't important, nor is it a constant. Great ping now, can become bad ping later. Plus the fact that all it does is ad a bunch of pretty meaningless coding.

Problem 2: It's hard to keep track of location. Many Swedish ISP (I'm from Sweden) has a .com or .net address. This gets interpreted as an American line. Same problem goes for many other ISP. Solution would be to trace all IPs before you connect to them. This would of course decrease the speed - A LOT!

Like I said before, best solution is to find a good tracker. I can't give any links, since that is against rules. Besides, all private trackers are mostly closed and you have to get lucky or invited. A good tracker/community generates good seeders. Good seeders have, in most cases, good speeds. No matter of ping or geographic location.

As for US being the fastest, I would have to disagree. My experience is that swedes have the faster lines Most of us have at least 1 megabit upload and a whole lot has 10 or 100 megabit up.

But since you download from more then one, speed actually doesn't matter. If you get 0.01 megabit per peer, but are connected to 1 000 peers, you get 10 megabit in download speed. Now, 1 000 peer/torrent ISN'T a smart thing to have, but it shows the general idea. So in general, once again, a torrent with lots of peers and few seeds will ALWAYS give you a good speed. It's that simple

[Ultima]

lol *essentially* the exact same thing I said, only with so much more detail xD

/me high fives Snapphane

[kieranmullen]

Ultima - What were the last great sweedish films that came out of hollywood? (there was a swed parody of babylon 5 and star trek called ""in the perkinging" it was subbed but it was mildy amusing)

music ? Maybe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe_(band)#Worldwide_success

[Ultima]

Hm... I don't know, I'm not Swedish, and I don't keep up with Hollywood stuff =o

[kieranmullen]

I would guess the 90% of all torrent material in number of TB transferred is from the USA. Games, software, Music, Movies etc

[Ultima]

Dunno, but I wouldn't count on that guess, as piracy is a worldwide crime/phenomenom/whatever.

[Snapphane]

/high fives back. Guess I was writing when you had posted

Yeah, not much great comes from Sweden, but we still seed it =) So, since our speeds are better, letting us wait for the download and then getting it from us - is pretty smart But as I said, good trackers will give you great speed, no matter of the country.

My "magic" formula is something like this!

At least 50 seeds/peers, even with low speeds, like 1 kilobyte/s (that's 8 kilobit), you end up with a good speed, around 50 kilobyte/s (that's 400 kilobit).

Always try to have at least 75% seeds, otherwise the other leechers steal to much speed. So 75 seeds and 15 peers is a good swarm.

Working around with torrents will teach you what's good and bad. I have been using it for around years and I still learn new stuff. Like the fact that my new 24 megabit connection is worthless, since my computer can't handle more then 10 megabit, without massive lagg - but hey! That's life

I did the speed in kilobyte, since that's what µtorrent uses. Recalculated to kliobit, since that's what ISPs uses. Long post is due to me being bored

[kieranmullen]

You have a 24 MB connection is cool. So how far can you transfer to others on the same network? How many times does your telco oversell their connection?

[Snapphane]

Not sure what you are asking, but the connection is without limits! 24 down and 1 up, pretty standard in Sweden for ADSL/DSL or what's it called. Those that doesn't run over the phone lines, have 10/10, 100/10 or 100/100. As we said - Sweden is a great country to live in, fast internet connection and for now, a liberal view on piracy

[kieranmullen]

Oh dear. You have no idea what overselling is? Very sad.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=Overselling&x=37&y=19

W Number of users have a max connection of X UP and Y Down

ISP has a backbone of Z (Usually same both up and down)

Now W*Y is always > Z

However to determine rate of reselling and how reliable your connection is and how often you are going to be able to use all your bandwidth.

=W*Y/Z

So really all this talk about how much speed you may or may not have is rather pointless & silly.

(I have a 15/2 MB Fiber Optic Connection No limits I have upload limited to 200KB in utorrent, however no one asked me, and no one cares)

[Snapphane]

Well, in that case I would say non! It runs over the phone lines and as long as they can hook you up to the main station, you get pretty much 100% all the time. Speed drops over distance, which is normal, so of my 24, I get around 17-18. Never heard from my friends that uses the high speeds more, that it drops due to overload So I would say that it's constant without overselling.

To get back on track, mods like it that way One thing which I have forgot about before is the few torrents you can use as benchmark. One is OpenOffice (openoffice.org) and then there is Linux distributions. I think there is a link on the homepage under guides. These always have lots of seed and should max out your connection. Always good for testing!

And remember to also cap your download to around 95%, that is around 1800 kB in µtorrent. Given that you get all those 15 mbit

[kieranmullen]

what do you mean non ? Non is commonly used as a prefix, not on its own.

Also speed does not decrease with distance. DSLservice uses a modem which connects from one point to another. Unlike dial up modems, Various vendors make modems which can negotiate different speeds and different distances since the lines do not have loading coils on them.

I already know when and how to cap my speeds.

Please no more smilies.

[Ultima]

Yes, DSL speed does decrease with increasing distance from your ISP's CO (central office). Non as in "no" (wow, can't take a simple typo?). You're in quite the dandy mood, now, aren't you? Somehow, I sense a hint of resentment against Snapphane coming from you, and I'm not sure where it came from, but I suggest you stop disrespecting him, especially after he's tried to help you, and hasn't done anything wrong on his part.

[kieranmullen]

No it does not. The modem negotiates a slower speed. Much like if you get a crappy line on your dialup modem. Your modem will auto negoitate a slower speed. It doenst mean your line is further away. It could be because installer error... loading coils brinning it from 52k to 28.8..

There are sites/providers that say that you cant get dsl beyond X feet.

However they should state that THEY can not provide dsl service of X speed beyond Y feet using Z vendor equiment. Even the wikipedia.org article on this is incomplete. As many vendors can provide service beyond 5 miles 8 km, yes at slower speeds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSL

"Older ADSL standards can deliver 8 Mbit/s over about 2 km (1.25 miles) The latest standard, ADSL2+, can deliver up to 24 Mbit/s, depending on the distance from the DSLAM"

I feel fine.

[Snapphane]

Okey - so I might make a spelling mistake, English is not my first language. As for the speed decreasing over distance, that's just something I heard and thought was correct. Maybe there is more to it.

I do know that you shouldn't extend you modem to computer line with a standard phone line, because of the said problem. Phone lines can't amplify the signal (or something) so you use a TP-cable in stead. This I HAVE proven, after a temporary and less successful solution at my mothers house. Given this, it seems logical that the same goes for the main lines. I'm sure they can install amplifiers or something and choice not to do so, hence the distance limitation.

But once again we are slipping off-topic, which is a bad thing in all forums. Think we reached both an answer and a solution the the question/problem and then there isn't much more to say.

Good luck with your torrents!

[Switeck]

Back to the original topic -- many, if not most...or even the vasy majority of peers+seeds on a torrent are firewalled. If you are firewalled yourself, you can NEVER connect to them.

If you are not firewalled, you have to wait for them to connect to you...which they may not do, because they may not get your ip from the tracker for at least awhile (an hour?).

They may have already reached max connections per torrent, so even if they HAVE your ip they won't try to connect to you.

They may have connection problems, so even if they try to connect to you the connection fails during the connect process.

Very often a connection on BitTorrent with 1 firewalled connection does not last more than 5-10 minutes. I've even seen this problem with unfirewalled connections to a lesser degree. I think it has to do with the BitTorrent protocol itself.

Since the connections are often short-lived, (<10 minutes) the probability of being connected to ALL of them at once is low to extremely low.

[jstarbuck]

What about trackers? Does having more trackers in your list affect how many people you connect to? Does anyone have a link to a list of them if so?

[DreadWingKnight]

Does having more trackers in your list affect how many people you connect to?

No. So there's no point in adding piles upon piles of trackers to every torrent.