Download less populated torrent first

[cakez]

Hello,

I've already looked arround in the features requests but couldn't find this request.

Anyway, i would like to say to utorrent to download the torrents in my list that have the less actives seeds and peers.

I sometimes download a torrent in which there are only 2-8 users and no one might be able to seed, so before the torrent dies it would be great to download it first.

[ajones81]

What makes you think a torrent with less seeds/peers is necessarily less active than one with more? I've seen torrents with just a few seeds/peers that I could download from at much, much higher speeds than from ones with tons of seeds/peers.

[cakez]

You're absolutly right.

But it's not about getting the files faster, but rather to be sure that you will be able to get the files.

A torrent with 3000+ active users can wait a little longer than a torrent with 3 users (one, or more, might decide to stop seeding).

[ajones81]

Why don't you push torrents you fear might die out up the priority ladder?

[cakez]

Because when i have multiple torrents i would like utorrent to handle it automatically.

Or suppose you have 2 torrents, 1 with 4 users and 1 with 3 users.

If the torrent with 4 users drops to 2 users, I want utorrent to prioritize this torrent.

[andr_gin]

I think this is not only the right way. If you have nearly dead torrents, where only 2 or 3 users remain that have only 30% each (most time the same parts), then it would be better to let this torrent die, if the availability is smaller then 100% including the people who have shutted down the computer too. And for the whole Bittorrent nework: Isnt it better to prefer one torrent file of the same content that is very fast and not pushing already dead torrents, when the same content exists another time.

If I do not have one good torrent, but a huge file size (>4GB), then I start the same content 3 times and after 1 hour I check which is the best.

[Ultima]

You're assuming the torrent is a dupe torrent. What happens if the torrent is unique, or simply old? Letting it die isn't the proper solution.

[andr_gin]

If it will never download completely I think it is better to stop all other users wasting their bandwith. If some of the torrents are important, but old, you can set the priority manually, but I think if you say ALL torrents with only a few users are more important is the wrong way.

[AlexeyPetrov]

eMule automatically manages priorities of files depending on their popularity. And when this feature just appeared, eMule developers called it very important advantage to other eDonkey clients.

I wonder, why such an obvious feature haven't implemented in all existing Bittorrent clients...

[DreadWingKnight]

Because BitTorrent is designed for a different purpose than emule.

[cakez]

I hear what you say, and i understand that the torrent philosophy is not to download several files at the same time.

But i find it sad not to be able to download files with few users, because they are generally more interesting.

[Switeck]

How should µTorrent decide which torrents are less "populated"?

Just because fewer seeds and peers are reported on a torrent doesn't mean it's less active. Many of the seeds/peers may be "ghosts" that have since quit the torrent, are firewalled, or are overloaded due to the other torrents they're running.

Faked and poisoned torrents will also skew the results further, with fakes appearing to be full of seeds...that never connect. While poisoned torrents are full of hostile peers that will also make the torrent appear "larger" than it is...and you won't want to connect to any of them!

This is definitely a bad idea as far as multi-file torrents are concerned. If there's no seeds left and availability is less than 1, then you may end up downloading files that cannot be completed while other files that may still be finish-able go idle. And you could even end up with less to share in the long run because of it!

[felix52]

Putting certain rules in place about what files to download first brings up the question of what set of rules does any specific person want. While someone might want the torrents first that seem likely to die, others might want the torrents that are most likely to be succesfully downloaded. Someone might want torrents that have just started seeding . Other people might want different sets of rules. If priority rules are implemented, a whole selection is different rules needs to be created to account for which rules different people want to use.

There is also the problem of the torrents state not being obvious. A torrent that just started seeding might have only one seed and very few peers but the seed is expected to fully seed. A torrent that is old where most peers are no longer connected might have just one seed left and only a few peers, but this old torrent is in greater danger of the remaining seed hitting a 1:1 ratio and deciding to quit before any of the remaining peers hit 100% or the remaining peers might only leech and leave the torrent hanging.

[e1ace]

sorry to revive this topic again, just wanted to know if this is still a possibility.

i would find this extremly useful as i often download torrents which only have 1 seed. it would be nice for this to have a higher priority because there is a high chance that the seeder will leave at some stage and the torrent might die. this should be some kind of option - off by default.

maybe in the advanced tab in preferences. there can be bt.prio_low_avail and bt.prio_threshold. the first would be a boolean (true false) which controls whether this option is on. the second would be a interger (or real) which when lower actives the priority for the torrent. it could be the avaliablity of the file. a default would be a value of 2. so if there is only 2 seeders then auto change the priority to high.

if there is a specific torrent which the user would like to finish then they can still manually change the bandwidth allocation. it just seems obvious that torrents with low availabilities should try download faster.

thanks