Highly Asymmetrical ADSLs

[ZeframCochrane]

In the country where I happen to live (Italy), because of infrastructure inadequacy (old phone lines etc.) almost all ISPs provide only highly asymmetrical ADSLs (10 Mbit Down / 256 Kbit Up, just as an example).

So, as much as I always keep torrents seeding, and my client running almost 24/7, I never manage to keep my ratio any close to 1, I actually have trouble keeping it over 0.4.

Am I considered a leecher? Shouldn't connection type be considered as well, when making that judgement?

I mean, considering my connection type (4 Mbit D / 256 Kbit U), and calculating the ratio between the two (U/D: 0.06), it's easy to see how difficult it is for me.

[jewelisheaven]

For ease of representation, only one ratio metric is used and that is total up/down. Yes for your 16:1 connection for you to be 4:10 means you are sharing very generously. Unfortunately no accommodation is made for this. There is no place for "max line download speed" as bittorrent is based upon upload. And inclusion of this trivial bit of information, which maybe useful in a system where peers get "rated", is not likely on a client level. I'm amazed you can even get that efficiency on Tiscali I applaud you for contributing.

To answer the question, you seed torrents longer than it took you to download so you're not a hit and runner (they close after stopping)... but with a total ratio of < .5 any system which makes ratings of people would likely warn you "please share more". If you're a member of any ratio tracking sites, and this is a problem you will need to enforce a max download rate.

[ZeframCochrane]

Thanks for your answer, and for recognizing my effort

Unfortunately no accommodation is made for this. [...] inclusion of this trivial bit of information, which maybe useful in a system where peers get "rated", is not likely on a client level.

No hope on that, eh?

I guess I'll have to go in some other civilized nation, with better infrastructures then

Thanks again

[jewelisheaven]

I misspoke, BLAH! There are peers/systems out there which keep track of your information. I meant to say it's not likely to be added at a protocol level so it must be added as an extension at the client level. But that fact means you would likely only be rated/see ratings for other peers on those clients .

I had to deal with this somewhat, but my cable isn't quite as asymmetric. Supposedly you get 6Mbit down but I'm shaped to 2. So for my internet I'm 4:1 so it's not quite as theoretical wait time. I can download something in more-or-less real time but it takes me 3 hours to see the thing back if it's the ONLY thing I am pumping out.

[Lord Alderaan]

Leecher is a definition invented more-or-less by Private Trackers.

The Ratio system Private Trackers employ has its quirks and is based more on morals then on the actual workings of the BitTorrent protocol.

Within that system the rule is pretty simple. "You can only download as much as you can seed."

That means that you should simply download less. Don't download something new if the old one hasn't seeded back to a good ratio.

Your download speed only determines how much time passes between noticing a torrent on a website and enjoying its content but has NO effect on how much you can download each day/week/month that is solely determined by your upload speed.

The system has been criticized a lot for many different reasons and there are sites that implement different statistics or other methods to (try and) compensate. With a connection like yours I'd simply give up on sites that use the Ratio system or only use them for things you can't find anywhere else.

[Switeck]

As trite as it may sound, be GLAD if you actually get 80% of that 256 Kbit Upload.

There are lots of places (such as in the middle of the USA) that are worse...where the choices are dial-up (often at <33kbit/sec speeds), maybe ISDN (for >$100/month), satellite (always firewalled, expensive, and halfway-to-moon-and-back latency), or 1.5 megabits/sec T-1 (for >$400/month!).

[hermanm]

There are some newer file sharing systems like Miro or Wua.la that consider your download and upload amount. If you upload a lot, you get faster download than someone else who doesn't upload a lot. So, with these systems your connection type would be taken into consideration. The problem is that since you have to register as a user you can be tracked. Sharing any copyright material means you take a bigger risk than Bittorrent.

[ZeframCochrane]

Wow, thanks everybody for your input. All these infos are very interesting.

[Switeck]

In my attempt to change and update the Speed Guide (CTRL+G) settings in uTorrent at:

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=34259

...I did make an effort to differentiate even dual ISDN (at 128 kilobits/sec down and up) from xx/128k. I recognize that there's less reason to have as many connections when your top download speed isn't over 16 KiloBYTES/sec.

With 10 mbps down and 256 kbps up, there's certainly plenty of potential for lots of connections...in an attempt to max out your download speed. However the download speed gain PER additional connection seems to go down rapidly once you're downloading (much?) faster than your upload speed...at least on "ordinary" torrents which seldom have lots of seeds. (...at least compared to the peers!) Most of the connections will sit idle (as they likely have snubbed you if they're a peer), costing bandwidth...but doing neither side any good. And the bandwidth where that cost is the most painful is on your already-limited upload bandwidth!

Playing with the number of upload slots per torrent and active torrents at once so that downloading torrents get enough upload speed that they can have multiple upload slots at >1.5 KiloBYTES/sec each is probably the key to maximizing download speed. This ALSO means few if any seeding torrents while downloading, with few upload slots each...and lower priority. In short, lots of manual control for best results...though a "fast" downloading torrent can become suddenly slow if seeds are very few and peers are reluctant to upload unless you give them more than other peers do.

[jmmtn4aj]

I'm on a hybrid fibre/coaxial line, but I get 20mbps down, 384kbps up. I have no problems keeping a >1 ratio.

[jewelisheaven]

You must not download alot then

[Ultima]

Or, he leaves µTorrent running often. I'm in a similar situation with 10mbit/s down, 384kbit/s up. Upload is shared across 6 computers on the network, meaning I have to limit my upload rate to ~10-15KiB/s to keep things running smoothly on the network (so effectively, I've got 10mbit/s down, 128kbit/s up -- no, download speed isn't a problem). Until recently, I've been able to keep my ratio well above 1.0. Until recently, because I've been away from the computer more and more recently.