Aspect of uTorrent's Coding Needing Serious Attention

[Radish]

Hi,

Don't know if this counts as a 'bug' but it seems to me that it is something that should be dealt with as a priority as if it were a bug.

I refer to a selection that can made via the following path:

Options > Preferences > Connection> Global Bandwidth Limiting

There it is possible to set a 'Maximum Upload Rate kB/s' (call this setting '1').

(and)

A 'Maximum Upload Rate When Not Downloading kB/s' (call this setting '2').

Good feature, use it all the time.

For the sake of example let's say that I set 1 to a rate of 22 and 2 to a rate of 28. These are settings I commonly use because for my connection I know that I still get a reasonable download rate with setting 1 at that value. I've experimented a fair bit with the two settings and they are both optimal and maximal rates for the connection I have - I do actually try to upload at the fastest rate my connection can physically manage when downloading+uploading or uploading alone.

My grouse is that very often I find myself in a situation in which all 'truly active' downloads are complete and I have a couple of downloads waiting which are marked by uTorrent as being in 'downloading' status. But, in reality, there is nothing actually happening with them. In effect, I might be trying to download a torrent which is inactive (at least for just now) but I'm trying my luck and just waiting to see if ever it becomes active. I'm sure a lot of people must do this as very often I'll see lots of peers (and on some occasions even seeds) in the swarm (but still nothing happens by way of 'active download' for that particularly torrrent).

Nevertheless, even though nothing is really happening, my uploads are still restricted to the setting at 1 i.e. to 22 kB/s. This could happen for hours, even days, and all that time I'll be uploading at 22 and not 28. So for hours, or days, p2p loses 6 Kb/s of upload rate from my connection. Of course for other people using those settings and landing in the same scenario I am describing p2p will lose again. Potentially that could be quite a sustained overall loss in upload rate over a large number of p2p-ers.

I really think that the coding team need to have a hard look at the algorithm that deals with this aspect of uTorrent and try a re-work such that some kind of check is being made in this kind of situation such that 'downloading' torrents are checked/monitored for *genuine downloading activity* and not just assumed to be genuinely active just because the client has registered that there are 'y' peers and 'x' seeds around that could theoretically be connected to.

Hope that makes sense.

I have a sneaking suspicion that if this was dealt with then p2p as a whole would see a reasonable bump-up in average upload rates, just depends how many people use these settings *and* get stuck in the *not genuinely downloading* scenario once all the genuinely active downloads have completed and they are now really in a situation of just wanting to seed back to whatever ratio is felt reasonable. (I say that not just because of uTorrent but because my past experience with Azureus was pretty much the same. Torrents regarded as genuinely active, even though nothing is happening, at an ultimate cost of not allowing greater upload rates.)

[Switeck]

This really falls closer to feature request than bug request, but it definitely qualifies as unwanted behavior.

The scenario which triggers the use max upload speed while downloading when it should be using the upload speed while only seeding is on DEAD torrents.

A LOT of people have a torrent or 2 that's maybe 50-99% complete, there's no seed in sight, and they leave it running in the hopes it ever finishes.

What's really sad is if you put uTorrent in seed-only mode with unfinished downloads. Once again, guess which max upload speed is used.

[jewelisheaven]

Thank you switeck, after 10 failed searches... http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=34596