Minimum connections to keep per torrent

[Pyrocks]

While trying to download a torrent with uTorrent, after two hours of downloading I noticed that out of 155 seeds I was only connected to 20 and out of 350+ peers I was connected to 31. No wonder I got such low speeds...

If you could add a 'Minimum connections to keep' per torrent feature I could in a way force the client to connect to more peers, and by that gain faster download speeds.

Note 1: I tried changing the 'Maximum Connections' values under preferences, but it only sets a Maximum - not a Minimum.

Note 2: This is a very common feature in nowadays clients such as Azureus, BitComet etc...

Note 3: I did a little research on this subject and in fact whenever I set a minimum to a certain level I always got better download speeds rather than using the Automatic defaults.

Hope to see it in future versions...

[chaosblade]

It's a wonderfull misconception that connecting to hundreds of seeds\peers helps speed. Usualy the seeds are busy as it as, so connecting to 150 of them will never give a boost of speed in the first place. Second, It's bad to performance anyway to keep alot of peers connected - most clients dont have huge default limits, and the mainline client keeps a maximum of 55 peers connected per torrent.

[slayers]

This is another one of those requests where people think they have a better way to connect to clients than the protocol.

And you say this is a common feature in Azureus? Where? It does not have this. But that's not a reason at all to begin with...

The reason most people don't get good speeds is because of faulty configuration of their system. It is only too easy to blame the client. Look at yourself first before you point fingers.

And get a decent torrent to begin with. Some are just not as fast as others. Maybe it's because the other clients are tinkering too much with their connections... Now there's a thought.

[silverfire]

I feel the need to quote bash.org, the all-knowing online bible on this one here:

99% of the time, the problem lies between the keyboard and the chair

[Firon]

The option in Azureus you're thinking of is how many peers to retain in the cache, not the minimum number of peers to stay connected to.

[Pyrocks]

Say what you want. from my little research the results are the opposite:

checked 4 different torrents on 4 different trackers on 4 different days of a month with 4 different sizes. At 1st I tried to use the default number of peers (which was less than a hundred) and then when it was finished I rebooted my pc and my Internet connection (I'm on dial-up ADSL so I had a new IP) and then downloaded the same torrent all over again, into a different directory (on the same drive) but this time with a larger number of minimum peers. luck? maybe, and maybe not.

Besides, it's just a suggestion. You may want to use it when the speeds are low as a last resort, and you may also never want to use it.

edited: Nevermind