So many peers with 100% or more, but I'm only downloading from a few?

[armyturtle]

I can't quite find any description of this issue in the forums - maybe it's that I don't know what to call it. Once you are downloading a torrent file you can click on the "Peers" tab and view peers which apparently have the same file(s) you are downloading. Currently I'm downloading a file that has 17 peers with 100% of the file(s). I'm only downloading from 4-6. There are many other peers with a lower % of completion.

Why is my utorrent client not downloading from more or better yet, all of them?

Thank you in advance for any help you'd like to offer.

[Switeck]

Because it would be worse than 10 times slower if everyone was FORCED to upload to everyone else all at the same time.

Seeds (with 100% of the file) typically only have about 4 upload slots per torrent...yet may be connected to 30+ peers at once. So the odds of downloading from any one at any given moment is probably only about 1/8th of the time. You're managing to download from about 1/4 to 1/3 of the seeds at once, so I'd say you're beating the odds.

Are you uploading faster than you're downloading even while downloading from 4 or more seeds?

[armyturtle]

I've both raised and lowered my upload rate, as well as raised and lowered the number of peers & simultaneous downloads & connections (each one at a time to isolate any issue). None of these made a difference in my speeds.

Torrent is great and I certainly won't knock it, but it'll be nice when the day arrives that there's something smarter/faster.

I used to love how the original Napster let you browse what else a peer you were connected to had to share. It'd be nice to see something like that for torrents or similar P2P sharing applications.