Want to seed, but *not* download...

[Toecutter666]

Hi All,

Want to get some ratio improvement, and do the right thing, and have heaps of partially completed torrents (movies, music, apps) that I'd like to seed, but (before you ask) only a few *obscure* completed files that don't seem to attract much attention - hard to keep the good ratio up. The partially complete material I have will be "popular" should I be able to seed what I have so far.

I get unmetered (but limited to 30kbps) uploads, but my ISP logs my cable downloads towards my monthly quota which I need to be very careful about as I need to maintain good DL speeds for my business. If I exceed my quota, I am then limited back to the old dial-up 56kbps.

As my "up" speed is so slow, my ISP gives us as much of it as we want.

So what I want to do is seed some incomplete, popular stuff while NOT downloading, using UT 1.7.7.

Any suggestions?

Cheers, Toey.

[jewelisheaven]

Setup the scheduler for seed only mode? Hold shift... blocks turn red.

[Toecutter666]

Aha! Thanks jewelisheaven - that'll do the trick. Appreciated.

[paulklerkx]

Hi,

I'm in the same boat. Want to stop all downloads during certain hours. I used to have the scheduler set to white blocks till I saw this post, then set scheduler to the red squares as indicated by holding down shift, with no change. I have the limited download rate set to 1 ( also tried 0) but while seeding the downloads still run between 1 and 3.5KB/s (most of the time between 2 and 2.5Kb/s) - With a 2GB peak hours limit on my connection (48GB offpeak), I am getting shaped after 2.5 -3 weeks. Is there anything I can do to completely kill these downloads while seeding? I prefer to keep seeding if possible. (using utorrent 1.7.7)

Even getting it to stay under 1Kb/s ALL the time, might get me through the month.

Any help appreciated.

[Toecutter666]

Hi Paul,

Actually, I found that the "red" (pink) squares were not working for me either, after all.

I'm in the same situation as you in that I have on/off-peak data allowances, and while my UP amount is unlimited (but slow), I absolutely must make sure that I do not exceed, and can control my downloads to certain amounts at certain times of day.

I do however wish to seed to the torrent community.

With UT 1.7.7 I did what you did mate - set "limited" downloads to 0 (doesn't work - just defaults to full speed), then "1" (as you say, doesn't really keep it to 1 as I think there's a lot of data "talk" that doesn't count as downloads but *does* skew the numbers if you're trying to achieve a low figure like a "1" - if you know what I mean... ).

So yeah, I'd still love to know how to seed incomplete files without *any* downloading going on.

I'm with you Paul - let's see if we can find the answer.

[jewelisheaven]

... Pink blocks are seed-only.

Trying to figure out what's unintended would be better than your "hack" to a download limit of 1. That kind of setting is useful for people who are shaped on uploads when they don't have any download traffic.

How does it behave when you are in seed only mode.

[Peekz]

Pink blocks definitely aren't seed-only behaviour for me too. (v1.7.7) Seemed to be downloading without any limits.

[jewelisheaven]

Yes, they are. It's in the manual, lol. Be sure 1) your scheduler is enabled 2) your seed only timeframes are applicable to the current system time 3) could your description expand upon "how does it behave" the current one isn't very useful :/

[Switeck]

The last block uTorrent was downloading from EACH peer/seed may continue till finished even if seed-only mode turns on.

Also, if you have LOTS of connections AND Resolve IPs AND DHT enabled then even while only seeding you may be seeing download speeds of >2 KiloBYTES/second.

If not, even still download speeds of up to 2 KiloBYTES/second may occur on an infrequent basis. Uploading requires some download bandwidth...not much, but a little -- maybe 1/40th to 1/100th as much. The more connections you have at once, then more is needed.

[Peekz]

jewelisheaven: Scheduler is enabled, current time period was previously set to off mode. Changing the current period from off to seed only (pink in the scheduler) results in torrents being enabled according to the global limit for downloading, in this case 2 queued torrents changed from queued to downloading.

[jewelisheaven]

Downloading status does not mean it's downloading in this case. In seed only mode downloading torrents only upload already existing data.

[Switeck]

And if uTorrent starts torrents that are 0% finished in seed-only mode, that's really a bug.

[Peekz]

I can confirm that bug does exist. I added a torrent while in seed-only mode and it's downloaded 4mb (0.7%) of the torrent now, according to the stats. It seems to be consistent with the overall download rate limit set for Limited Mode, as I've got that set to 1kb/s

[Switeck]

Does the same problem occur with the latest version of uTorrent (v1.8)?

[Peekz]

Fixed in v1.8

Cheers

[paulklerkx]

I found the best result I can get for when I want to only upload is to

set the scheduler to Off

tick the box that disables dht when turning off ( on scheduler page)

and

Force the uploads that I want to run. ( right click - force start)

I tried the resolving IP's change Switeck suggested (as below) - no noticeable effect, however the dht option above seemed to slow the downloads a little.

In the Peers tab torrent - right click anywhere and untick "resolve IP's"

Now the downloads are more like between .5 and 1.2, so this should go close to getting me through the month.

Peekz mentioned that the issue is fixed in 1.8 - I usually avoid anything with the word Beta on it. Anybody got an opinion - should I get 1.8 ( stable?) ( or should I go to another Post for that )

[Switeck]

v1.8 is now at release candidate 1.

Have you exceeded some bandwidth quota on your ISP and been shaped to dial-up speeds?

[jewelisheaven]

Force start bypasses the queue and scheduler. You can only run uploading torrents at that time, which is inconvenient for people who use a queue. Lower your number of active torrents and peers per torrent, lower your half-open count, disable LPD, DHT, and turn off (default FALSE) scrape_stopped under Advanced preferences.

[paulklerkx]

To Switeck, yes, I have a 2GB plan with 48GB offpeak. Normally exceed the 2GB part within around 3 weeks, so the last week of each month was shaped even though I don't actually use my PC for much internet related except utorrent seeding during the peak period. ( I probably use around 250 - 300MB for non-torrent stuff, the other 1700MB is from seeding)

P.S. sorry for the slow reply, ISP issues

To JewelisHeaven

Apparently I can't post a separate post to JewelisHeaven, so here it is.

I have a 1500/256 connection - what numbers do you recommend

I have the scheduler on with full speed offpeak and "turn off" during on peak ( white squares)

Lower your number of active torrents ( I have 7)

and peers per torrent ( I have 3),

lower your half-open count (I have 8),

disable LPD, ( Couldn't find this setting)

disable DHT (during offpeak it is disabled - on scheduler page)

turn off (default FALSE) scrape_stopped under Advanced preferences. (set to false)

[Switeck]

"half-open count (I have 8)"

That means attempting 8 new connections at once until uTorrent reaches global maximum. This costs bandwidth...almost entirely upload bandwidth if the other end doesn't reply. But it also costs download bandwidth if the other end replies but refuses to connect for BitTorrent transfers.

If you're not firewalled in uTorrent, you can use a lower half open value without slowdowns than if you're firewalled. I recommend 4 in your case, going as low as 1 during peak hours.

Local Peer Discovery (LPD for short) is enabled/disabled right next to DHT.

Resolve IPs also needs to be disabled to save a little download bandwidth. It's changed by being in the peers window of an active torrent and right-clicking to pop up the menu.

Your peers per torrent is certainly too low if you use that value all the time. 10 at least would be more preferable, at least during off-peak hours.

But...upload slots per torrent probably shouldn't be set to the same value (3) if you regularly have 7 torrents active. You're only uploading at maybe 25-30 KiloBYTES/second...so splitting that 21 ways would mean you're not even giving out an average of 1.5 KiloBYTES/second.

While seeding, it is even more helpful to the torrent swarm to have a higher average upload speed per upload slot than while downloading.

I recommend an average upload speed per upload slot of 3-5 KiloBYTES/second as the "sweet spot" while downloading...going no lower than 2 KiloBYTES/second if you want lots of torrents active at once. While only seeding, uploading can go as high as 10-20 KiloBYTES/second...though that's obviously too fast for most connections.

[paulklerkx]

thanks for the suggestions. changed all to what you said except LPD because that was already disabled, now only getting between 0 and .1 KB/s downloads when doing forced seeding during offpeak hours - This should easily keep me under the monthly quota and help to get my ratio up.

Thanks very much.

I should point out that the DL's ran at about 1-2 KB's for the first minute or 2 after starting forced seeds, but then dropped down which suggests to me that the half open count (attempting new connections synchronously until uTorrent reaches global maximum) is possibly the main setting that helped.

**************************************

After getting 1.7.7 working well, I figured I'd try 1.8 and see if it stayed the same. tried turning on the "seed only" red squares. This took the download while "seeding only" back up to between 1.5 and 2KB/s

So I went back to the way it was with scheduler set to " Turn Off" during my off peak and set some torrents to force seed. I have no idea why, but now it is back up to between .5 and 1.1 KB/S this way. I've checked all the settings and they were all retained during the upgrade.

I've also noticed that even if I have nothing running, the scheduler is set to "turn off" and I have no forced torrents, with this new version I still get between .5 and .8 KB/S downloads. ( that's with nothing running??? - no seeds, no downloads)

[Firon]

It's not actually download, it's protocol overhead.

And if you have DHT on, that also consumes bandwidth.

[paulklerkx]

Thanks for the info. I have the tickbox ticked for "disable DHT when turning off", so must be all protocol overhead.

So According to my calculations, protocol overhead uses an average of say 1.5KB/s protocol overhead when "seeding only" which is the lowest it went to on my PC.

That is

135KB per Minute

8100KB per hour

194400KB per day

1360800KB per week

5832000KB per 30 day month (5695 MB)

50% of my month is peak and 50% is offpeak 12am to 12pm, so "seed only" runs for 50% of the time.

I need 2847.5MB of OffPeak download available for torrents per month, but my offpeak is 2000MB, so I should probably avoid using the "seed only" option or turn utorrent off during offpeak for at least 7 - 10 days of the month.

Otherwise, if I set to "Turn off" during off peak and force some uploads, the protocol overhead is about half - average .7 - ( approx 1400MB per month during offpeak) I should be right this way.

Just trying to get this clear in my head - does this sound about right

[Firon]

DHT doesn't get turned off in seed only mode.

[Switeck]

Unless you have a pressing need for it, you'll probably be better off with DHT always disabled.

Lowering half open max in uTorrent as low as 1 during peak hours should reduce downloaded amount slightly too....though not as much as just having fewer total connections.

Keeping total connections per torrent low while seeding, such as 20 each should also help a little.

You can't upload to 20 at once per torrent...so there's not much need to stay connected to them and get their hopes up.