Brand new to torrents, want to be good member of the community...how?

[Sleeping Under the Tsars]

So my very first file just finished downloading (I've tried to do this torrent thing before, but I'm pretty useless with computers) and I think the whole torrent community thing is exciting and really cool.

...This said, I want to do the whole giving back to the community thing, and from what little I understand of the FAQs and user guide is that this entails seeding (which I understand to be simply leaving the torrent thing up and not closing it after its finished downloading) and by keeping an average of one seed for every download, right? If this is the case, how can I tell what my stats are in this regard, and also: is that all there is to it?

I mean that seems easy enough, but... I've been hypnotized with watching the "down speed" all day, and given my complete ignorance regarding computers, trying to understand the fluctuations in the "down speed" is pretty much left up to my imagination. So when there are these great spikes upward in the rate, I read it as this: Some guy is trying to work out a deal with me by accelerating my "down speed" for me on this one file, in exchange for something - and I would gladly oblige except I don't know what they want or how to do it.

Am I just being paranoid or is there something I should do? And in general, is there anything else expected of me to help out the community?

Thanks for any responses

...first post, woo

-oh, and one more thing, does seeding slow down my own downloads? If so, by how much? And are there any kind of torrent faux pas I should watch out for?

[Switeck]

Help, Show Statistics.

Seeding is just leaving the torrent running after reaching 100%...assuming people can connect to you. If nobody's actually downloading from you, it's kinda stretching things to say you're actively seeding the torrent.

2nd link in my signature...if you're on ComCast, you probably can select at least 1 and maybe as high as 2 megabit/second upload settings. With those settings uTorrent should be ok at finding peers to share with.

Your download speed probably has huge jumps because ComCast seems to allow higher speeds to other ComCast customers. To a lesser degree, you'll get decent speeds to/from major ISPs in the USA. Favorable ISP peering arrangements probably.

If the peers/seeds aren't showing what ISP they're on, you can turn off Resolve IPs (right-click in PEERS window of an active torrent) and use the bare ip in a web whois search. I use this one:

http://www.dslreports.com/whois

[Sleeping Under the Tsars]

I did the settings you recommended, and they seem fine (no worse, anyway), but the thing about ISP...

This seems to imply that I can isolate specific people to download from that have the same ISP, or at least another big one, thus resulting in a faster download? I could very well be misunderstanding you, but if this should be the case, where do I look for such peers (under the list of peers? If so, aren't I already downloading from them?), and then how do I focus the downloading onto them?

I appreciated your response very much, btw. Thanks