"Enable Trackers" and "PEX Preferred" (Sandvine implications)

[Honeyfrog]

(If there already exists a way to do the following in Advanced settings, please advise.)

There are two interrelated requests here. But first, anecdotal background:

As a "sanded" (Sandvine RST-crippled) Comcast subscriber, I need a means to auto-prevent DHT and tracker peers from connecting once there are peer-exchange peers present in an initial-seed torrent. Here's a brief run-down of the seeding choices I currently have available to me. Assume I have a very large multi-file torrent (e.g., 10+ gigs), and am highly desireous of uploading the least over-percentage possible before the torrent has a reliable swarm copy.

"Forced" encryption is enabled....

A. Tracker list & DHT & PEX "on", regular seeding mode: Advantage -- best method of "kick-starting" a brand-new torrent because it guarantees best early speed. It also permit sanded peers to finish an aborted piece. Disadvantage -- requires seeding a massive over-percentage (sometimes exceeding 200%) to complete a stable swarm copy among non-leeches; this is an especially accute problem in multi-file torrents where many peers are only interested in some of the files, or have some of them (usually the same ones) marked "high priority".

B. Tracker list & DHT & PEX "on", initial seeding mode: Advantage -- none. Disadvantage -- In a sandstormed environment, uTorrent's initial-seeding mechanism is 100% worthless. Peers don't stay on the list long enough for efficiency to be tracked. Peers freight along an increasingly heavy load of incompleted fragments. (Anecdote: I recently tried downloading from a sanded seed using initial-seeding more; after all night, I have hundreds and hundreds of incomplete pieces, and not a single complete one.) Some clients can trade incomplete pieces, but many are hesitant to, and regardless of whether they can or not, no "Got" message are sent (again thwarting efficiency tracking).

C. Tracker list & DHT & PEX "on", super-seeding mode in Azureus: Advantage -- fast like regular seeding in uTorrent, but otherwise has all the disadvantages of initial-seeding in uTorrent.

D. Tracker list deleted, DHT disabled, PEX "on", initial-seeding mode: Advantage -- since PEX-connected peers are presently immune to sanding, this is the best means of duplicating the initial-seeding efficiencies I enjoyed in the pre-sand era. PEX peers also tend to have (1) good clients and (2) great upload speed (and so an initial seed exclusively to PEX peers is theoretically faster, more efficient, and more reliable than an initial seed to the broader peer-base). Disadvantage -- no way to "kick-start" a torrent in this mode since no one can find the torrent; the mode can only be entered after the torrent is already running via a means listed above. There will be a lesser or greater percentage of lingering tracker/DHT-based peers who remain sanded. Torrent will register as unseeded at various web-hosting sites, reducing the number of potential peers.

E. Like D above, but you wait a looooooooong time (e.g., hours) before re-starting the torrent after switching DHT off and deleting the trackers. Advantage -- there won't be any tracker or DHT peers at all. Disadvantage -- you also might not get any PEX peers either, because the PEX peers whose IP addresses you wrote down to manually add later may have gotten bored and left after deciding your torrent was junk.

--//--

Feature requests:

Enable Trackers

...checkbox appearing next to "Enable DHT" in the Torrent Properties dialogue. By default it is checked. If manually unchecked, it disables the associated torrent's announce URLs. (Presently the only way to do this is to manually delete all of them.)

PEX preferred

...checkbox on same dialogue. (Greyed-out if PEX disabled.)

PEX Preferred checks for the following condition once every X time-units (X ideally minutes integer): "Is a PEX-connected peer present?"

...if the condition is met, then uTorrent will disable the tracker list and DHT, and prevent new tracker-based connections.

...if the condition is not met, then uTorrent will re-engage trackers and DHT briefly until new peers appear, then disengage. (Theoretically new PEX peers will arrive thereafter, and interim tracker peers then shunned again.)

[0xCC]

Two excellent ideas, I really like these. Surprised nobody else has commented...

[xent121]

I thought Initial Seeding and Super Seeding are the same thing...

Great idea...so let me get this straight...you're suggesting once a PEXed peer is connected, that it will go pure PEX to prevent getting sanded?

Hooray for new Logger messages!

[08:19:47] 218.186.178.58:3370: Disconnect: I'm seeding up stuff under Comcast's nose

[08:19:48] 190.16.245.80:58795: Disconnect: Trackers not allowed