couture57 Posted October 17, 2006 Report Share Posted October 17, 2006 Hello, all - I just discovered the world of BitTorrents a few days ago. Where have I been?! I am familiar with (and do a lot of) filesharing in other forms (like sharing .zip and .rar files through FSF forums), but none as complex as this.I have a few questions I hope someone can answer.My computer is one of the oldest and slowest on my home network. I am running XP Pro, SP2. I don't have a lot of room on my hard drive (only about 10 gigs available at any given time), so I move files to another computer as soon as I get them. For a variety of reasons, I don't want to install uTorrent on the other computer. Is there a way I can have the uTorrent program send and receive files directly to the other computer, while still actually running the program on this one?That leads me to the other big problem. When uTorrent is running, it slows down everyone on the network! Web pages won't load, programs run like molasses, and everyone else in the family is mad at me! I want to be able to keep uTorrent running so I can seed the files I have downloaded, but it slows everything down so much that that is a real problem. And I am afraid that if I try to let uTorrent upload files that actually reside elswhere on my network, it will make the problem worse.Last question - Am I useful as a seeder even if I only download part of the files from a torrent? Not to go into any illegal details, but I am finding that I sometimes only want or need a few of the files included in a torrent, so I am telling it to "skip" the other files.We are running on DSL - I'm not sure of the speed, but it is not the "lite" version. We have used the same DSL modem since 2002.Thanks for any help you can give. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Switeck Posted October 17, 2006 Report Share Posted October 17, 2006 You must know exactly how fast your connection really is, otherwise µTorrent may be outruning various limits.Have you run Speed Guide (CTRL+G) and chose the appropriate settings choice to match your UPLOAD speed limit? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
couture57 Posted October 17, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 17, 2006 I'll try that and see what it tells me - thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mage Posted October 20, 2006 Report Share Posted October 20, 2006 Right... My brother was into all these torrent files as well, but I just recently started getting into it out of desperation for finding rarer files.And uTorrent seems to work for that. Kudos.I've been browsing around for...goodness...looks like 2 hours now... for a place to request seeds and/or reseeds. The file I'm attempting to get here has this funky availability bar... which my d/l bar (under General) is identical. The little slivers of seemingly missing data, but the availability ratio is 1.943, which indicates that it SHOULD all be there...right? Or am I missing something? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Switeck Posted October 20, 2006 Report Share Posted October 20, 2006 Just because a seed is present doesn't mean it's uploading at any appreciable rate. I've seen many that either refuse to give me anything for hours...or does so at 0.01 KB/sec speed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
couture57 Posted October 20, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 20, 2006 I tested my speed and it is running about what my ISP claims - 2800kbps down, and 310kbps up. I read all the FAQs I could find about uTorrent, bittorrents in general, and my specific router (a dlink DI-524). I updated the firmware for the router, then did a lot of tweaking to all my settings (router, uTorrent, and network) based on the information I found.The result is that uTorrent is now averaging 40 to 50 kbps on the downloads, which is about 5 times faster than it had been running when I first started using it. That still seems awfully slow compared to my speed test results, but I think I understand the factors that affect it. An ETA of 2 days is better than 3 weeks, right?!Everything I was concerned about in my original post is working better now. I did configure uTorrent's scheduler to not run in the hours when other people are using a lot of bandwidth and computer resources. I also configured uTorrent to put completed downloads in a folder on the other computer. It hasn't completed anything yet, so I don't know how well that will work for seeding, but we'll see. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Switeck Posted October 20, 2006 Report Share Posted October 20, 2006 Try the xx/256k Speed Guide (CTRL+G), and then increase upload speed to 30 KB/sec.That should roughly match the connection you have. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
couture57 Posted October 21, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 21, 2006 I think everything's working correctly - my completed downloads were moved to the other computer, and uTorrent shows they are seeding, but they are not resident on this computer. So I have my 8 gigs of open space again, and I can still do my part to share the files I have received. Yay!I just increased the upload speed from 22 to 30, and everything still seems to be working. Thanks for the help! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Switeck Posted October 21, 2006 Report Share Posted October 21, 2006 Thanks for your effort too, many people give up on sharing and only seek to maximize their download speeds at all costs...especially at other people's cost. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
couture57 Posted October 22, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 22, 2006 What's the point in that? I think this is kind of like life - you get out of it what you put into it. I want to share what I have received - hopefully someone else will feel the same way so I can get a file I am looking for. As soon as I figure out how, I'm going to create a torrent of some other files I have and offer them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Switeck Posted October 22, 2006 Report Share Posted October 22, 2006 Some people foolishly think that because they have a x Megabit/sec download connection they should get x Megabit/sec download speeds using BitTorrent software...even when they have x/20 upload bandwidth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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