speed question (not a complaint)

[canadave]

Hi,

I've gotten very high speeds at times with Mac uT (latest version), so I know it works. I'm just curious about something. There's a torrent I'm trying to download with over 2,900 seeds and 20,000 peers, of which I am connected to about 45 seeds and 200 peers. I have my network port manually forwarded and green; encryption is set to Enabled, since I suspect my ISP chokes torrents; and as I said, in the past I have successfully achieved very high speeds.

However, in this case, I'm only getting about 10-15KB/s down, and about 30KB/s up (no download limit, and a 55KB/s upload limit). I've been watching it for about 15 minutes now, about half an hour after starting the download.

Can anyone explain why this sort of thing occurs? I'm confused as to why more seeds/peers aren't connected (my connection preferences are 500 per torrent, 3000 total, on a WRT54GL with Tomato set to 3900 max connections); also confused why speeds are so slow in this particular case. I know torrent speeds generally vary based on the speed on the other people uploading, but surely with 22,000 clients to choose from, we can manage more than 10-15KB/s?

Thanks for any ideas and explanations....

Cheers,

Dave

[chrisglimpse]

I'm getting the same issue, check this out:

Any ideas ?

[DreadWingKnight]

of which I am connected to about 45 seeds and 200 peers.

Which is actually likely too many for your connection.

The additional connections generate a LOT of additional protocol overhead which eats into the bandwidth normally available for downloading and uploading actual useful data.

[bizzyb0t]

2,900 seeds and 20,000 peers? There's really no wonder why you're getting slow speeds!! A seed is basically a completed copy of the file that is currently available in the swarm. The more seeds the better. "Seeders" are people that have the full completed file and are currently uploading or 'seeding' it back to the swarm. A leecher (aka "peer") is someone who is currently downloading that file from all the other people or seeds that are currently available. A torrent will download much faster if there are more seeds than leechers, this because if there are more copies available than people downloading, it will obviously go slower (ie, in your circumstance) than if there are less completed copies available than there are people trying to download the file.

If the slow speeds bother you, then wait until a torrent has been more thoroughly seeded and the ratio of seeders to leechers is higher, then download the file. Either that or wait your turn in the swarm. You won't get it any faster. This speed issue isn't a problem with µtorrent but is just the nature of torrents and cannot be remedied by configuring your torrent clients any differently.

[DreadWingKnight]

A torrent will download much faster if there are more seeds than leechers, this because if there are more copies available than people downloading, it will obviously go slower (ie, in your circumstance) than if there are less completed copies available than there are people trying to download the file.

This isn't quite true.

Seeds have no incentive to upload to a specific peer.

You get better speeds by properly configuring your settings for your connection, regardless of the number of seeds on the torrent.

[bizzyb0t]

Well, settings aside, having more seeders will help.

Perhaps 2,900 seeds/20,000 leechers is a bad example

[DreadWingKnight]

Not necessarily.

I've had torrents with 0 seeds go faster than torrents with a high seed:downloader ratio.