@Switek - Speed Question

[Ramalama1]

First, exalt for the Speed Guide - I am one of those who falls in the "red" area on your table - after several tests over a few days both at night and during the day and while one two or three of our network computers was running, I got an average that I think is as accurate as I can get. D/L speed average is 1.2mb/s and U/L is 315 kbps.

I just came across a post of yours from a while ago and I am trying to digest the info. Here is what you wrote:

While downloading, it's best to have slightly more upload slots...that way even though you're only giving out maybe 3-5 KB/sec per person, you'll still be "beating the pack" on average and tit-for-tat logic of the BitTorrent Protocol should result in you getting rewarded in far higher download speeds in return than someone who is uploading at only 0.1-0.5 KB/sec per person.

While uploading, you want to get out complete pieces as quick as possible to as many people as possible. But this goal is completely contradictory, short of increasing upload speed! With pieces on many torrents being 1 MB and as much on 4 MB on monster torrents, that can take over 20 minutes at 3 KB/sec per person just to send a single completed piece to anyone. In that time, despite uploading to possibly alot of people at once, you've not created a single additional source for pieces. By reducing the upload slots, people can get completed pieces faster...and then hopefully you as a seeder will switch to other peers to upload the next pieces to.

While it is possible that your upload is being "wasted" by uploading to a leecher using BitThief (or the like), someone whose upload speed is stupidly low, or a hit-and-runner that is almost finished with the torrent and about to leave...that can't and probably shouldn't be avoided. Getting leeches off torrents, whether sooner or later, is a good thing...as just having them there eats up a little of everyone's bandwidth that they connect to.

There's also a checkbox to use additional upload slots if upload speed <90%. That's insurance against the 1 slow sucker who's downloading so slowly from you that you're wasting huge sums of upload bandwidth. I use it some, but found it is only a partial fix. Since it only starts using additional upload slots if upload speed is <90% max, there is a delay between low upload speeds and adding more upload slots to take up the slack. Worse, if conditions ever occur to reduce how fast you can upload...and you left your upload speed max in µTorrent set higher than that...then µTorrent could open up more and more upload slots (thinking there's unused upload bandwidth/speed to give out) and upload speed per person would quickly drop to a point not worth calculating!

However...While downloading, you don't want to upload more than about 10 KB/sec on average to each person because most cannot upload that fast back in return. Of course if you have 100+ KB/sec upload speed and don't mind sometimes getting less download speed back in return, then sending more per person isn't a bad thing.

Right now I am uploading only. My 'speed limit' is based on one of the built in settings, and it is [45] and I have right now 40 torrents that I would really like to be done with - there always seems to be one hog getting half of that. Since all 40 torrents are in the active list, and they all nicely take turns - peers drop off, and another queued job starts up when someone wants it. I tossed in another slot (6) and they are rarely all being used but when they are the speeds range from 4 - 8K. Is this okay in light of what you wrote about getting these torrents seeded? They are not what I would call particularly large - in the vicinity of 50mb.

I think I may have been doing something wrong but when I am downloading an enormously popular torrent with in excess of 50 seeds, I use the feature to reduce my uploads. Is this okay? Based on your post, I should probably stop doing this and also reduce my number of slots to 3. initially, I thought this was okay since I see such great upload rates, often two or three of them >10 and never any <3.

Can you respond?

[jewelisheaven]

I hope you don't mind me interjecting, but in-practice you can limit upload slots more on smaller torrents, thereby rotating more between peers to get more out to each peer faster, instead of getting more data out faster. I think it comes out the same especially with a smaller piecesize, but the advantage to 10-15 KiBps per person (1 slot) versus 3-5 (3 slots) is that when you pump it out to the peers they get it in 1/3 the time, which leaves your other upload elsewhere at the time. Are you super seeding these torrents? Before I comment more I'll digress to let your intended recipient have time to digest and respond

[Switeck]

Firstly, what is the speed of your connection?

"D/L speed average is 1.2mb/s and U/L is 315 kbps."

mb/s = megabits/sec?

kbps = kilobits/sec?

Pac.Bell ISP?

ADSL?

ADSL lines are only 24 megabits/sec max down and 1-2 megabits/sec up.

Without explaining this, any answers I give you will likely be based on an incorrect understanding of what you want.

[Ramalama1]

I tell you what, I will go to dslreports.com (am member there) and run a test, come back and stick it here. Hang on....

[insert pause here ]

Okay, back

don't know how to make image. Grr.

Anyway, pacbell adsl yes.

Test says Kbps up 1291

down 314

Jewelisheaven, one is superseeding - that is the one that shows up as 0(0).

Without sounding too sarcastic, could you please define small??????

I think of 40mb as small. Like say for example a 10 track album of music as opposed to a 400 MB or more movie as being large.

[Switeck]

Ok, so your max upload speed is only about 314-330 kilobits/second. You probably can't upload faster than 40 KiloBYTES/second in uTorrent. Although there are 8 bits in each byte, it takes more than 8 bits of bandwidth to transfer 1 byte so you don't get a perfect 8-to-1 conversion. It's more like 9-10 bits of bandwidth per byte.

Each active torrent typically needs a couple upload slots each, unless you're seeding nearly-dead torrents. And each upload slot needs at LEAST 1 KiloBYTE/second upload speed each.

To me, anything below 150 MB is "small".

In my recommended speed guide guide suggestions, the closest fit for you is the 320 kilobits/second upload one. I don't know what you meant by [45] "one of the built in settings".

[Ramalama1]

Okay, I am now using the recommended numbers for 320 kilobits per second.

As for my nearly dead torrents, they are all nearly dead - not really popular, the kind of stuff that seems to attract leeches in droves who are not into sharing, and most of them only have at most 3 seeds. Some, they only have me. I wanted to help d*noid get back on track by re-upping some torrents that were totally dead - stuff I had snagged last year that I still had the original torrent and files for. It did work to add them back since they were removed from the database. Those that I tried to add back ended up having problems so I made all of them over and uploaded them over a few days. They have been getting lots of downloads, just not a lot of sharing. Some of them were hard for me to find in the first place so I considered that in deciding to make new ones, plus, I was just starting out. I think my stupid ratio is like 6 something or other. Sizewise, the smallest is about 49 MB. Tiny!!! The largest is a five album compilation and rather large - about 395 MB.

Taking a look at my jobs now, my overall speed is 39.8 - boy you really nailed that one. It probably would not hurt to reduce my limit from 45 to 40, right?

I have 6 slots but not all are in use. Right now there are two. One if them is bouncing around between 1.5 kB/s nd the other is at around 19 kB/s - the slowpoke is in India and the big eater is cable out of New York. Out of curiousity, I paused the big uploader and watched the Indian connection and it did not pick up at all so there is not a lot I can to to help this person, right?

[jewelisheaven]

Switeck is THE-MAN Those slots will work great keeping the average across all the peers to your limit.

For that poor .in peer, if you even see the "peer dl rate" at something low, it's likely no you can't do anything about it. It's more about if they're running alot at once and maybe stop some at nighttime (they're gmt+5 giveortake)... so if you want to keep the upload consistent add another torrent, maybe artificially lower its up limit and slots for now, at least until the NY peer finishes up.

[Switeck]

Actually, you probably need to lower upload speed to more like 32-35 KB/sec.

...Such as 32 KB/sec while downloading and 35 KB/sec while only seeding.

If it's running any faster, you'll probably see minor to major slowdowns while web surfing.

[Ramalama1]

Lowered to 40 and it is not impeding right now. I have 5 torrents seeding while writing this. All of them have one peer except for one that has two. (NOT wildly popular stuff LOL) I will implement your suggestion if I have to do any major web surfing. The biggest frustration is that most of the peers jump on and off so fast that setting a speed limit is hard to do on a per torrent basis. I have not played around at all in the advanced settings, since it says WARNING Do not modify

but is there a way to set an upload speed per torrent (NOT global, I got that) like your suggested 10?

[Switeck]

I don't suggest setting Per torrent upload speeds, unless you want one to run REALLY slow.

Otherwise, you could have the combined speeds being less than your max...due to some torrents running too slowly.

Use Priority HIGH/NORMAL/LOW to make individual torrents upload faster or slower.

Double-clicking on a torrent in the top list will let you set its individual speeds and upload slots separate from normal global max.

[Ramalama1]

Leaving them alone. Good advice! Thanks a bunch. Love the speed guide, love your clear and consise help!