My average share ratio is about 0.2 (not proud)

[quaternions]

My connection is : 384 Kbits up, 4 Mbits down

My stats on a normal night : 14 current torrents. 200 KBytes/s down. 30 KBytes/s up. 280 DHT tracked. 380 peers connected.

So why does every torrent site including this one say "with a 384kbit upload limit your torrents to 2 or 3 or you'll get bad download speeds"? I get bad speeds if i *don't* start 10+ torrents.

I think this is the torrent client producers (who of course do a good job and thanks for 1.7) trying to stop peeps like me ruining the protocol with a share ratio of about 0.2

It occurs to me that perhaps my set up is peculiar in some way. It sure does help having a good router, properly forwarded, properly configured and i think Vista is faster than XP too. But this can't be that uncommon can it?

Incidentally my ISP does throttle me in the evening so i take the hint and turn them off, to be honest i think that's fair enough, i can still pull in 5-10 GB a day without a problem. And i do seed on Demonoid up to 0.5 cos i like that place.

[Switeck]

You can set an alternate upload speed while not downloading (basically when ONLY seeding) a couple KiloBYTES/sec higher than your usual upload speed. That way, your share ratio will go up faster while you're seeding...and since you're not downloading at the time, you won't notice any additional slowdowns while surfing the internet.

The recommendation of few active+downloading torrents at once assumes good torrents.

If you're on torrents with 10+ peers and 1 seed...with total availability less than 2...then it's going to get a few percent of the torrent probably really fast then crawl along at whatever speed the seed's uploading to everyone at. In those cases, you probably should throttle the slow/hopeless torrents down and start more. I do this by reducing upload speed to just 1 KiloBYTE/sec and upload slots to 1...and reducing priority to LOW. This I don't see as pure leeching because typically I already have a ratio of 4+ on that torrent. If/when these "bad" torrents ever finish, I try to seed them so nobody else has to suffer the same fate.

The ODD thing I've found on many public torrents is if I don't have at LEAST 5 upload slots for the torrent my download speed and even my upload speed can suffer. For whatever the reason, I've seen my upload speed be less than max, despite connecting to 20+ peers all interested in my data. This only seems to get solved if I raise my upload slots (or automatically allow more), but it means MANY upload slots are uploading at <2 KiloBYTES/sec even though my average upload slot speed is still above that amount. The only thing I can conclude is the vast majority of peers stuck on a big torrent are on throttled ISPs which can only download+upload at a trickle. I can't hold a connection with most of them longer than 10 minutes -- many break in the first minute.

Hit-and-running is the odd term used to describe downloading a torrent as fast as possible, then stopping the torrent when it finishes. This implies uploading only slowly while downloading, and can leave the remaining people in the torrent unable to finish the torrent...as the seed/s leave after THEY have uploaded their fair ratio limit. Even though I don't have my settings optimized for downloading at the max, I've often finished downloading a torrent with my ratio at less than 0.1. Just to reach 1:1 ratio, I have to upload 10 times longer than it took to download...and I have xx/384k upload bandwidth max too.

[quaternions]

I'm going to try and use more upload slots like you've done. Anecdotally I think its better to send a little data to many peers rather than a lot of data to a few. I've noticed that i can sometimes send as little as 1 KByte/s to a peer and in return receive 100+ . So it seems peers will send you whatever they have spare so long as you send them something, no matter how small.

I don't mind hitting and running myself. There are lots of people who like to seed above 1 In fact i've seen ratios of 20.1 those people get kudos in there communities so don't mind. And there are lots of people who seed new torrents to 3 or 4 cos they like to share stuff and in those cases saying thank you or cheers is enough.

[Switeck]

It is important to note whether a torrent you've finished has at least 1 seed left in it. If not, then it is better to seed that one to 2+ times what you downloaded than almost any other.

Spend your upload wisely...adding another seed to a torrent that's already superfast doesn't help the ones that don't have any seeds at all.