Multiple simultaneous downloads WTF?

[dudethedreamer]

i dont understand the 'Multiple simultaneous downloads' feature, it doesnt seem to help downlaod speed infact its slower then normal downoaods i get from the interent =(. tell me what this feature is useful for? DC++ uses 1 user to downlaod from and its usualy faster as well as any other downlaods that is not related to utorrent =(, whats the advantage of this feature?

at first i thought id be able to downlaod from multpiple users speeding up my download speed by the number of users =).... =(

[DreadWingKnight]

Increasing the number of peer connections increases protocol overhead. Above about 50-60 peer connections, you start getting into the area where you're generating more overhead than actual usable transfer.

Increasing the number of active torrents divides your connection too many ways.

Running multiple downloads on a connection that can't handle them is a VERY bad thing for you and everyone else downloading.

[dudethedreamer]

well i have 100.0 Mbps connection and usualy donwload 5/10 files at a time and they all run good (average 50.0 kb/s) without lagging my computer, i just dont understand the advantage of 'Multiple simultaneous downloads' or is it just another method of downloading?

[Switeck]

You got good speeds on DCC++ because who you were downloading from was also on extremely fast lines.

Most people don't have 100 Megabits/sec download/upload rate. At that speed, you could probably run 100 torrents at once if your networking hardware and software could handle that...and each would in theory get about 1 megabit/sec up and down. That's more than some of us have TOTAL!

And what we have is important to remember -- because although your line is VERY fast, not many can upload fast enough to you to make a dent in your speeds. My max upload speed is 42 KB/sec...and I usually have it split multiple ways, so even with 1 torrent going someone's unlikely to see more than 15 KB/sec from me. With multiple torrents going, I only upload about 1-5 KB/sec per upload slot. So assuming I am average and upload about 5 KB/sec to someone who's uploading also back to me... you'd need possibly 2,000+ connections to max out your line. Most consumer hardware can't handle that many connections. (Linksys routers with custom firmware might, but they're the exception to the rule.)

[dudethedreamer]

yeah i also have Linksys router with booster =) and just bought a intel 2 dou processor, and am waiting to recieve me geforce 7950 grahpics card from newegg, im assuming its gonna be able to handle just about any game online. but yeah thanks for explaining that to me i understand how it works now and why it is needed, i never considered that im downloading from users with slow connection

thanks

[Switeck]

The people with much faster connections often are running LOTS of torrents at once, resulting in speed PER torrent being not much better than the slower connections. A big problem here is people run µTorrent's Speed Guide (CTRL+G) then choose the speed setting that matches their download speed rather than upload speed (like they should)...resulting in them attempting to use settings meant only for connections 5-20 TIMES faster than they have.

[dudethedreamer]

so does that mean that 'Multiple simultaneous downloads' is really a bad feature? wouldnt utorrent do better using the single downlaod method without letting users limit thier upload speed? then there wouldnt be so much data going back and forth from so many location i just assume that would release the stress on utorrent

funny thing is i open DC++ up and searched for the same file my utorrent was downloading and i got 150 KiB/s =( compare to 20 kB/s from utorrent

[Switeck]

If 4 guys are sharing it on DCC++ and 1 on µTorrent, then it really isn't a speed difference -- it's a people difference! But chances are there's probably more people on µTorrent than on DCC++, which is also often hub-specific.

Many people use Speed Guide and choose the right upload setting, so they all help out. But the way µTorrent (and E-Mule for that matter!) is set up, you're not supposed to be uploading at 50+ KB/sec to just 1 person. If anything, you're only going to be uploading at 3-10 KB/sec per person on a "regular" broadband connection.

However there's LOTS of people on BitComet which upload at less than 0.1 KB/sec per person, and don't even realize that's a problem. So just because you get lots of people on a torrent does not promise good download speeds. And that problem is not neccessarily µTorrent's fault.