'smart' seeding?

[QauNuckShin]

Does µTorrent take note of the availability of the pieces when seeding/uploading? If not, would it be possible to implement 'smart' seeding; prioritizing uploading rare pieces?

Maybe this is already BitTorrent standard, I dunno. Maybe it would be against the standard to prioritize like this. I don't know. I just think it would be a useful feature. Even more so if more clients followed.

[boo]

µTorrent already has this, double click on a torren and check 'Super-Seeding'.

But only use it when your the only seed, otherwise it hasn't so much use

[QauNuckShin]

That's my point exactly. Super-seeding will only work when you're the only seed (and is most useful if your connection is slow).

With 'smart' seeding, the availability of pieces would even out, and there would be more complete sets of the file available.

[boo]

Super-Seeding does what you said, it sends the rarest peices to people,

but this won't work/isn't need if there are more than 1 seed.

[QauNuckShin]

I don't think you get what I mean. Even if there are a few seeds, some pieces may be more rare than others. To make sending those pieces a higher priority would even out the availability of the pieces, and if some of the seeds disappeared, more distributed files would be available. You would not be uploading _just_ the rare pieces as in super-seed, but rather choose to upload rare pieces when you've got clients requesting both rare and common pieces.

[Ultima]

That's (theoretically) how BitTorrent is supposed to work. It tries to get the rarest pieces out first.

[Switeck]

On the download side, µTorrent I think already tries to grab the rarest pieces of a torrent first.

[TheBear]

If it's sending out the rarest pieces and looking for the rarest pieces then all is harmonious in the universe.

[Ultima]

Yah, seeing as how it's part of the original design of BitTorrent xP

[splintax]

Super-Seeding does what you said, it sends the rarest peices to people,

but this won't work/isn't need if there are more than 1 seed.

sort of, but "rarest" pieces in this case means "pieces that only you have"

[Ultima]

Isn't that always considered rare in any situation? Superseeding attempting to send only "rare" pieces is probably a better way of putting it =]

[QauNuckShin]

If you look at the availability bar in µTorrent.. The ones in very light blue should be prioritized, but the client should _not_ send those pieces only. If one peer has requested a dark blue piece, and another a bright blue, the seed would choose to upload to the guy wanting the bright blue piece. That's as simple as I can get. Sorry if I'm insulting anyone.

And as I said; maybe this is already part of the Bittorrent protocol. Then everything is fine. Maybe this would interfere with some other prioritizing rules of the protocol. That's cool, we want to stick to the protocol.

[Ultima]

Heh I was talking about superseeding when I said it tries to only send the rarest pieces. With regular operation, I believe the clients already try to choose the rarest pieces (again, because that's how the spec says BitTorrent clients should run).

[splintax]

IIRC, superseeding will not prioritize a piece with 1 availability over one with 5. (It actually won't seed either.)

[Ultima]

Well, if all the pieces are already seeded and in the swarm, superseeding will continue to upload the rarest pieces (even if it's already in the swarm).

[splintax]

Really? I thought you weren't supposed to do it when there are other seeds in the swarm 'cos it doesn't work at all, and you're supposed to use regular seeding in this case (which prioritises rare pieces itself).

[Firon]

You can have availability of >2 without having another seeder in the swarm.

You're supposed to stop super-seeding when there's another seeder, not necessarily if availability is 2 or greater.

[Ultima]

You're supposed to stop, but even it will continue to upload the rarest pieces until you turn it off (whether there's seeds or not). This is why the automatic enable/disable super-seeding might come in handy.