active torrents

[shrav007]

hi guys,

i'm currently using a 8mbit/s download and 256kbit/s upload connection and i'm fully connectable. I used the guidelines on this page to configure utorrent: http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=34259 my connection would be the 256kbit/s meaning that i should only have 2 active torrents of which only 1 should be downloading. Is there any way that i can tweak the setting in order to allow me to have more than 2 torrents, e.g. increase the global maximum number of connections and reduce connected peers per torrent?

I was also wondering if seeds were included in the maximum number of connected peers per torrent, so for example if i set a value of 20 does it mean 20 seeds and leechers altogether or just leechers?

[Wedged_in]

Ahh, if i understand you corectally all you need to do is go to preferences>queing and change the max active torrents to whatever you want

[shrav007]

yeah i know i can do that but don't i need to change the settings for max global connections, peers per torrent, upload slots, etc?

[Wedged_in]

i don't think so, i never did and i don't have any problems, as long as all that is tuned correctally it should be fine

[DreadWingKnight]

20 is seeds AND downloading peers.

Increasing the number of torrents you have active at once will be detrimental to your speeds, as you will be splitting your connection more ways than it can support.

[Switeck]

Increasing the number of torrents you have downloading at once without also increasing the amount you're giving back...may help you, but it can doom torrents if you don't seed them later. And it may not even increase your download speed if the torrents you're on are particularly short on seeds...and have crappy peers.

The reason I limit active torrents as low as I do on my chart is out of fairness to others, and to maintain compatibility with the BitTorrent protocol itself.

However if you want to have 2 downloading torrents at once instead of 1 downloading and 1 seeding, that's perfectly fine -- as there's no increase of upload slots to divide your limited upload speed between.

256 kilobits/second is only 32 KiloBYTES/second of bandwidth...file transfer speeds for that counting TCP/IP protocol overheads AND BitTorrent protocol overheads might knock that down to 25 KiloBYTES/second. On top of that, you might not have a "clean" line...and be getting hit by all kinds of viruses, worms, and trojans trying to infect your box...so effective speeds are even lower. Or a physical bad line (rusted wires and such) that reduces speed a little to a lot. Or a jackass "ISP" that really treats the "speeds up to" as never-happening events...and you're really LUCKY to get 75% of that on a good day.

On top of that, you probably don't want uploading in uTorrent to cripple your internet connection so badly that web surfing is worse than on dial-up.

So my speed guide recommends only uploading at 22 KiloBYTES/second.

2 torrents, 3 upload slots = 6 total upload slots.

So the average peer downloading from you while they're one of your upload slots...sees an average download speed of around 3.6 KiloBYTES/second.

If you don't mind probably lower download speeds PER torrent, you could possibly do 3 torrents at once with 3 upload slots at the same upload speed. That'd still be 2.4 KiloBYTES/second per upload slot...probably still good enough that peers will return the favor.

At 1 KiloBYTE/second per upload slot, you won't get much. And below 0.5 KiloBYTES/second, they'll simply ignore you.

Except on over-seeded torrents, (read: private trackers) it is unusual to download more than around 4 times faster than you're uploading. That's pretty much because so many people have a max download speed that's over 10x their max upload speed. Or in your case, 32x upload max.

[shrav007]

thx a lot for your time switeck, i still have a few questions

1) I noticed that if i increase the global maximum number of connections, my internet gets crippled, is this normal?

2) Would it be alright if were to reduce the upload slots to a value of 1 or 2 so as to increase download speeds for my peers?

3) Does uTorrent detect which seeds have the best upload speed and prioritize them over other seeds?

If so could i set a value of 10-15 for maximum number of connected peers per torrent and have 1 or 2 peers (which i am uploading to) and about 8-10 seeds (which i'm downloading from) on average?

[DreadWingKnight]

1> Actually it is if you're running near the limits of what your connection's hardware can handle.

2> If the upload speeds to those one or two peers are reasonable, then yes.

3> Seeds won't always give you good speeds, depending on other factors, but uTorrent itself will request pieces from any peer that offers them.

[shrav007]

thx DreadWingKnight, the following are some figures that i'm going to try out

Global maximum number of connections: 70 (only 10 more than switeck's chart recommends so hopefully it won't cripple my internet)

Maximum number of connected peers per torrent: 10 (1 connection is the upload slot, which leaves 9 connections for seeds)

Number of upload slots per torrent: 1 (i set a value of 1 so that on average if there are 7 torrents then each leecher will get 32/7= ~4.5kB/s)

Maximum number of active torrents (upload or download): 7

Maximum number of active downloads: 7

I'm not going to limit my upload speed because I've personally never experienced any slow-down in internet browsing even when i'm seeding at 25-30 kB/s and lets face it, my ratios will never go up on private trackers if i seed any slower

[DreadWingKnight]

Set an alternate upload rate while not downloading of 0 and have a limited upload rate while downloading. It'll work better for you.

[Switeck]

Global maximum number of connections of 70 is not a big deal.

Speed Guide's xx/256k setting gives 130.

Like DWK said, you'll download slightly faster with an upload speed max set.

Even while only seeding, you might upload 1-3 KiloBYTES/second faster sustained with an upload speed max set than trying to run at max all the time.

[shrav007]

thx for the help guys everything seems to be going fine

[tez1love]

Plz Help!!!!why is it that after shutting down utorrent then opening again a few hrs late or next day r sometimes a few miniutes later does utorrent have to then take hrs checking the downoading files, this never used to happen but now it is??

when i shut down then restart it just goes right through checking the downloaded file again before resuming,its very annoying when it can take up to 4 hrs to check what is downloading before they all start again,

how can i prevent this from happening???

[DreadWingKnight]

By letting uTorrent shut down properly.

Don't thread hijack.

[tez1love]

what do u mean by thread hijack?

i do normally shut utorrent down properly by goin to file then exit, but it still does the same.

[DreadWingKnight]

You've posted in someone else's thread for an unrelated issue. DON'T!

[Switeck]

You're not the original maker of this message thread and your problem is nothing like the original poster's. So you're trying to "hijack" our attention off the original poster's to solve your problem first.

It's really rude.

Make your own new message thread if you want help, or at least tack your posts onto a message thread at least vaguely on the same subject!

[tez1love]

This Was Not Intended & Maybe U Should Give Sum Leaway To Knew Users Give Us A Break I Mean There's Much Worse Things Happen In This World!,thanks For The Help Anyway.

[DreadWingKnight]

our leeway for new users ran out over a year ago.

[thelittlefire]

Well I'm pondering what leeway this is and what happened a year ago

<Staring at the title wondering is that all there is?>

[Switeck]

tez1love, you are on a hostile ISP...good luck sorting that out too!