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download vs upload ratios


boanerges

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what i am saying is, when you seed more than you download, then when you do download something, the utorrent progam looks to see what your download to upload ratio is, and if you have seeded more than you have downloaded then it gives you preference to the better peers in which to download from, hence faster speeds. as to what i am trying to get at is, does the utorrent progam look at current session ratios which is in the lower right of the utorrent window or total lifetime ratio as found in the help tab in the upper left under "show statistics" when making it`s decision as to what your ratio is. does anybody know? or do i have to make life more difficult for firon! much mahalo

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Ratios have ZERO effect on your download speed for a new torrent.

The current torrent's ratio even has a very marginal effect for itself.

Only (private!) trackers that maintain ratios for ips might affect whether you can download/upload torrents or not if your ratio falls too low.

What matters as far as download speed is concerned is firstly if there's enough seeds to keep all the peers "happy", and secondly if you're uploading faster PER upload slot than other peers...so you get the "lion's share" of other peer's upload speed.

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Speed is determined by a combination of a couple of things.

Ratio's are an indication of how much is your share in the distribution of the torrent. In general a 1:1 ratio is considered fair and 'having done your part'.

µtorrent doesn't keep ratio beyond the scope of a single file because it's useless. (Private) Tracker Communities only keep a ratio over all files to enforce a non-leecher policy.

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... speaking of "having done your part":

I'd like to -- I get it that it's important -- however, I'm unsure how to increase my down/upload ratios, most of which are hovering at about .5.

Please, before I get slammed for being "stupid" or some other negative, while I AM a relative newbie, I've done everything up to this post by searching and reading and applying what I've found. My download and upload setup is per this site's recommended procedure and according to my current line speed.

If a "how-to" IS spelled out somewhere, would just appreciate someone pointing the way. Otherwise, if not, would appreciate someone more knowledgeable helping. I'm trying not to delete any downloads until I've "given back" appropriately ... but I'm running out of storage space.

Thanks.

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so if i start the program, let it seed overnight without downloading anything, in the morning i have uploaded a little over 1 gb, and my download reads 30 to 40 mb due to protocal for uploading. does this positve upload ratio improve my download speed, access to seeds, or anything in anyway? because it is clear to me that my friend "the computer expert" don`t understand what he is saying when it come to utorrent and ratios. but you folks seem to have your heads on straight and don`t shovel bull just to appear brainy. many mahalos. p.s. i noticed a decent increase in speed when i switched my modem to pc connection from usb cable to ethernet cable.

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USB connections to modems tend to be no good...both very slow and can't handle lots of connections at once, which BitTorrent almost demands!

Seeding on a torrent won't help you download that torrent any faster, because if you're SEEDING...you already HAVE that torrent. Seeding 1 torrent on a tracker will only affect another torrent on the same tracker IF the tracker records ratios, but if it does it may ban your ip (range!) from the tracker for awhile/indefinitely if you don't have a ratio of at least 0.5 to 1.

If you don't upload at least half of what you got, then who will?

My max download speed is over 15 times faster than my max upload speed, yet my overall ratio is over 11. Most of this is on a tiny number of rare torrents I continue to seed that most people download and just leave with their ratio probably <0.2 :(

If I leave, these torrents will most certainly die -- nobody else will be able to complete them because nobody else seems interested in uploading back as much as they got.

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thank you switeck, you cleared up alot of questions i had. i`am still going to seed 24/7 cause i believe as freely as you recieve, freely give, and then some! my only ? is how many torrents should i seed at once, just one, so it can have all my upload speed, or multiple torrents so every body gets a little of everthing, if it is multiple, how many? i can upload at 512kb which is 64kB overall, how many kB`s upload per torrent is considered good etiquette. much mahalo. p.s. viva la seeders

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I have been having an issue with DL and UL in the last few weeks. I share and have a UL of 40-60KB and a DL of only 1KB or less, so I have temporarily turned off all my sharing. And I still am unable to DL anything. Nothing has changed with my configuration and my bandwidth test shows 5MB speeds.What is going on with the torrents?

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boanerges, use the ethernet connection and follow the settings (mainly Upload Slots, Active Torrents and Active Downloading torrents) suggested by the speed guide (when you pick your upload from the connections list) and in most of the cases you have your ideal seed/upload settings.

And regarding seeding. I always say you can only leech as much as you can seed. In general I upload with 70kb/s (24/7) which is roughly 5,7 GB a day. So I don't add more then that in torrents each day. Although not every file uploads back to a ratio of 1 overall I do keep a ratio of 1 and thus keep my conscious semi-clean :P

However since (in my experience) public torrents suck more upload then private (community tracker) ones I often have a ratio between 0.8 and 0.95 on the closed communities.

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"And regarding seeding. I always say you can only leech as much as you can seed. In general I upload with 70kb/s (24/7) which is roughly 5,7 GB a day. So I don't add more then that in torrents each day."

THAT'S the information I was looking for, at least, so thank you. I wanted to know what tweaking I could do past setting up according to the speed guide (which I did) to try to even out that ratio.

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The BitTorrent protocol has a suggestion in BitTorrent client design to not choke the TCP/IP connections with too many upload slots at once. So I figure it's best to try to give each upload slot roughly 1 mostly-full data packet every second. Since MTU (maximum transmission unit) over much of the internet is 1500 Bytes, that works out to be 1 KiloBYTE/sec per upload slot.

The problem is, EVERY active torrent whether downloading or seeding gets their own upload slots, assuming they have enough peers to meet that number.

So 4 max torrents with 4 upload slots is actually 16 total upload slots when all 4 torrents have well over 4 peers each connected to you. And that would take 16 KiloBYTES/sec minimum to really be fair.

Reducing upload slots below 3 seems counter-productive in my tests...even WITH "use additional upload slots if upload speed <90%"! The upload slots will often be to slow peers, so upload speed often goes unused. Worse, while downloading, your upload speed often won't be rewarding peers who are uploading to you. ...causing download speeds to suffer immensely.

With 512 kilobits/sec upload bandwidth, not all of it can be devoted to pure upload speed. There's TCP/IP overheads, BitTorrent protocol overheads, and also the random "chatter" from other programs wishing to use the internet. So instead of 8 bits of bandwidth being roughly equal to 1 BYTE of file transfer, it's more like 8.5-10 bits of bandwidth to transfer 1 BYTE of a file...on average. So you can set your normal upload speed to 45-50 KiloBYTES/sec (depending on how much lag it causes your connection) and possibly as high as 55-58 KiloBYTES/sec "alternate upload speed" while only seeding. That's about 10 KiloBYTES/sec faster than my line will do.

But...with that ~50 KiloBYTES/sec, downloading/seeding maybe up to 8 torrents with 3 upload slots each. Make sure you don't set downloading torrents as high as total active torrents, or downloaded torrents will often become queued (with new torrents starting) instead of being seeded for awhile. This can get you banned pretty quickly from private trackers.

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so i see that it is a very fluid equasion that varys depending on how many peers are connected to the seed, myself being the seed, this is compounded for each individual file i seed. and the bandwidth of each peer. and when i download i should stop a seed to make room for my new download. also my download speed is limited by the number of seeds i`am connected to, there upload speed, divided by how many peers are also connected to them. alittle confusing but i think i`am starting to get a grip on all this. thank you switeck for your patience with this rookie newbie. one more thing, in the peer tab it shows % of file they have, 100 being a seed, less than 100 a peer. along with the kB/s they are uploading to you. when you r/click in the peer window another window asks "add peer" i click this, add the port number and wait for selected peer to start uploading to me but nothing happens, am i using this correctly? sorry for being so "duh". much mahalos

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Even if there's LOTS of peers on the torrent you're seeding, you still don't want to put upload slots very high. This is because of piece sizes being non-trivial to send, especially if 2 MB or 4 MB in size.

If you're only uploading at 5 KiloBYTES/sec per upload slot (which is FAST btw!), then a 2 MegaBYTE piece will take almost 7 minutes to send out. And a 4 MegaBYTE piece will take 13.7 minutes. Multiply those times by 5 if you're only uploading at 1 KiloBYTE/sec per upload slot. Most pieces never get completed at that speed by a single source, so peers take a LONG time to have anything to share to someone else. ...like half an hour or more!

So, upload slots above 5 or 6 is a waste, and you'd only want to set them that high to speed up your DOWNLOAD speed...not how fast you can seed.

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so your ul speed is divided by the the number of ul`s divided by the # of slot per ul hence if i have 4 slots per ul and 5 ul`s and my ul speed is 50kB/s.the formula should look like this. 4 x 5 = 20 total slots. 50kB/s divide by 20 slots means appox. avg. of 2.5kB/s per slot. and increasing the number of ul slots increases your ability to dl while the opposite is also true. so what is the coralation between decreasing your ul speed(not slots) and faster dl. this happens to me, i`am not complaining i just don`t understand what and why this is happening? as i asked in chat under the topic ultra fast dl . much mahalos & viva la seeders.

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Yes, 4 x 5 = 20 total upload slots. So 50 KiloBYTES/sec divided by 20 upload slots is 2.5 KiloBYTES/sec per upload slot...that's what OTHERS see of your connection on torrents.

You won't always get download speed by increasing your upload slots. You have to out-upload others. MOST everyone else is only uploading about 0.1-1 KiloBYTES/sec per upload slot. The more you're uploading PER upload slot, the greater the likelihood that whatever peer you're uploading to will upload back to you. Give to receive, tit-for-tat...that's the philosophy behind BitTorrent.

Your download CAN speed up if you decrease your upload speed...*IF* there's lots of peers and seeds that will upload to you regardless of how fast you're uploading to others. Also, download speed can increase if you're overloading your upload speed...and you decrease your upload speed a little.

But...download speed probably won't increase any further if you've already lowered upload speed a bunch to a very low level, like from 100 to 20. Going from 20 to 6 KiloBYTES/sec upload speed probably won't net any more download speed.

If you're on a slow torrent with only 1 seed and lots of peers at the same percentage, then the faster you upload can get your download speed up to the limits of the seed's upload speed for the torrent. But you cannot download any faster than the seed gives out -- if you have nearly the same percentage as the other peers.

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switeck THANK YOU SO MUCH explaining these things in a clear, concise manner in which a lay-person can understand. and not a bunch of tecno-babble only geeks understand. through your tutalage i have managed to get my second dl over 500kB/s although i do realize that won`t happen every time, but you`ve taught me to optimize my options and preferences to best suit my needs. your a killer moderator!! if you don`t get paid you should or be compensated some how. if you are ever on the big island of hawaii look me up, i`ll hook ya up "local style" while your here. once again BIG TIME MAHALOS and viva la seeders

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Just remember that for the survival of torrents and even BitTorrent in general that if someone doesn't upload more than they download...chances all it'll all die.

So seed what you get at least to 100%...or a little more to cover duplicate data and rare hash fails.

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yes i understand, that`s why i like to seed 24/7. now i`am going to start playing with the scheduler, so it will open the bandwidth to the max when i`am sleeping and automaticaly cut back to the recomended 80% during the day so i can do my daily net surfing. also i`am hoping that after a torrent reaches my desired share ratio, that it will automaticaly revert to seeding my favorites.I`am sure it`s in the faqs & guides some where how to do this. although not everthing is not in there, so i`am sure you will be hearing from me again, untill then, many mahalos & viva la seeders!!

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so you mean you got to find a happy medium by setting your max ul to a kB/s your isp can deliver on a consistant basis and not have it spike up & down like it would if it was set on unlimited. grasshopper is beginning to see the light!! a thousand mahalos and a long and rich life may you enjoy o wise one. viva la seeders

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Yeah, the upload (or download) bandwidth yo-yo is very bad indeed!

If set to unlimited, you end up averaging maybe only 50-70% of what you could be getting.

Btw, I am uploading at 42 KiloBYTES/sec right now.

My pingtimes to www.google.com are 44-377 ms.

Too high for a realtime game, but just fine for web surfing.

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