# of Leechers when Initial Seeding

[coinflip]

What is the most efficient number of leechers to connect to when Initial Seeding?

I have a swarm of about 35 leechers and I am the only seeder. Right now I set my connections per torrent to 10. Should I connect to more? less?

It has taken me eleven hours to get the swarm to 65% on a 4.5 GB torrent.

Would like some good advice on how to get copies out a little faster.

My upload stream is between 90-100 kB/s

[Ultima]

Stick to the Speed Guide's recommendation, and µTorrent should do the rest. You don't want to spread your upload speed too thin by setting the upload slots too high -- that'll just slow the swarm down, since it'll take longer for peers to have a full piece to share to other peers. The most efficient number of peers in an initial seeding swarm is having a single initial seeder with more than 1 other peer, with more usually (always?) being better.

You're doing fine with an average upload rate of ~77KiB/s anyway. Initial seeding isn't meant to get pieces out as quickly as possible; it's meant to get the piece distribution/availability as high as possible with minimum bandwidth usage, so there often will be a speed tradeoff when using initial seeding.

[coinflip]

So, would you say to get the copy out faster I should not use initial seeding?

And in the swarm I mentioned with 35 leechers, would you say 10 is about right?

The leechers have great connections by the way.

They are all waiting on me, that is why I am looking for a faster way to get them out.

All 35 leechers are at 65%

My number of upload slots per torrent, 70.

[Ultima]

WAY too many upload slots. Stick to whatever µTorrent recommends for xx/1mbit, and don't alter it.

What I meant was that initial seeding often won't max your upload rate out. What it does do is minimize duplicate sending of pieces. In that sense, it might take less time to get the entire torrent out. Even though you can usually upload faster with initial seeding than with normal seeding, you might end up sending a piece out over and over, even though it's already in the swarm (so it won't add to the torrent's overall availability). In those cases, it certainly wouldn't be faster to get the entire torrent contents out using normal seeding (even if your overall upload rate increases).

Keep it on initial seeding.

[coinflip]

Thanks for your timely help.

You were right WAY too many upload slots.

I do not know why I had them that high.

I had this idea that if I limited my connections per torrent to 5, it would help since I would be giving most of my line to those 5 peers instead of the whole swarm.

By setting my upload slots to three, I achieved the same thing.

So I think I am all set, the torrent seems to be moving along a little bit faster now.

Thanks again.