Seed priority, private tracker

[ovonrein]

Hi, I have joined the happy BT community a couple of months back, use utorrent as my client and generally try to be a good BT citizen by using an upload target of 250%, staying open 24/7 and not really removing anything I download. Since overcoming myriad technical challenges thrown in my way - mostly inadvertendly - by the likes of M$, Kaspersky et al, my life was one of quiet contentment until yesterday I downloaded sthg from a private tracker for the first time. It arrived fast enough but ... now I am banned. I am not uploading enough. I am even being accused of not seeding. To my mind, that's all rubbish. The stuff I downloaded sits as a "queued seed" in my utorrent and is competing for bandwidth with all the other stuff that's sitting there. My upload bandwidth is fully utilized by utorrent around the clock. Nothing's wrong. Not good enough, apparently, the private tracker informs me. To regain respectability, I must up my upload ratio. Hence, allow me a couple of questions:

1) I thought that "queued seed" meant that utorrent would respond to an incoming request to seed. Why is it that these guys perceive me as not seeding?

2) How does utorrent decide which queued seeds to turn "active"? In other terms, when a request to seed hits utorrent, how does it decide whether to accept or reject that enquiry (assuming that all configured connections are always busy, which tends to be the case on my box)?

3) Is there a way to prioritize torrents for upload? My preference would be to prioritize those torrents that have few seeds, followed by those with low upload ratios.

The way I "resolved" the issue for now is to "force seed" the private stuff. I don't much like this since these forced seeds are totally outside the general rules. In particular I have had problems early on when I allowed utorrent to open up to 100 connections, only to find that utorrent burnt CPU like mad without actually putting out very much at all. This "thrashing" problem went away when I limited the max number of connections to 4, in line with your configuration formula for my available bandwidth. I am therefore somewhat conscious that adding a lot of "forced seeds" to my client has at least the potential to destabilize utorrent.

Thank you.

[Ultima]

(1) Queued seed means the torrent hasn't yet reached the default 1.5 seeding ratio goal, and that the torrent isn't actively seeding or connected to the tracker. That means peers won't be able to connect to you while the torrent is in queued seeding mode. What queued seeding indicates is that µTorrent will eventually get to uploading the torrent when it thinks the time is right. If you're worried about your tracker ratio, enable Preferences > Queueing > "Seeding tasks have higher priority than downloading tasks", though that'll cause all torrents to finish seeding before the next torrent is started.

(2) queue.prio_no_seeds and queue.use_seed_peer_ratio figure into the decision, but beyond that, I'm not too certain how µTorrent really decides which torrent to pick.

(3) See my response to (1) for prioritizing seeding over downloading. If you're asking whether it is possible to set the queue order for seeding torrents, then the answer would be "no, though it's been requested before."

[ovonrein]

I appear to have succumbed to a fundamental misunderstanding of the technology/terminology employed. I queue seeds for a couple of (video) torrents which, in my humble estimation, are a part of our shared cultural heritage (I am digressing somewhat from the private tracker issue). These films are mostly very old and not very popular (amongst the young BT crowd). There are very few seeds out there. Naturally, I have got hit quite a bit on those and they have all achieved their upload target of 250%. Still, I continue to queue them in my utorrent because I want to prevent the seed count ever falling below 1. You seem to be saying I might as well not bother - under no circumstances will utorrent ever seed them again? My understanding was that reaching the target ratio merely meant that utorrent will not prioritize these torrents, yet if ever I was left as the only seed, utorrent would continue to seed beyond the target?

If your understanding was right, then utorrent might as well remove all torrents automatically that reach their target ratio, no?

I put my question another way: does my utorrent decide what (few torrents) it wants to serve up to the world (at any one time) and then wait for peer replies saying "yeah, I have some of that - thank you very much"; OR does my utorrent not go to tracker sites (on startup), saying "gee guys, I have got all this good stuff - let me know if you want some", is then bombarded by incoming peer requests (for any of the stuff) and chooses to accept or deny these requests according to some ruleset I don't fully comprehend?

While I wait for your reply, I shall read up on the queue.parameters that you mention.

Thanks.

[Ultima]

Uh...? Where am I implying that you shouldn't bother seeding?

does my utorrent decide what (few torrents) it wants to serve up to the world (at any one time) and then wait for peer replies saying "yeah, I have some of that - thank you very much"

Yes.

[ovonrein]

In that case, if a leecher would like to download a torrent for which I am the only complete seed left but my seed has long reached its target ratio, then my utorrent will not bother actively seeding it, right? So how are that leecher and I ever going to meet? ("Queued seed means [that] peers won't be able to connect to you while the torrent is in queued seeding mode.")

My understanding was:-

a My utorrent starts up and tells the various trackers (associated with my various torrents) that it is alive and ready to serve up anything in my window.

b A leecher trundles along to the tracker and asks for the seed to a torrent.

c The tracker gives the leecher a list of IPs that are queueing the seed, myself being one of them.

d The leecher approaches my utorrent to request seeding. My utorrent receives this request and, based on some algorithm that assigns torrents to available connections, decides to accept (or reject) the request.

e If accepted, utorrent moves the torrent out of "queued seed" into "seeding".

e From that moment on until the leecher goes away (or my utorrent ceases to seed), I will stay in touch with that leecher, serving up pieces of my files.

I understand you as sayaing:-

a utorrent decides, based on some algorithm that assigns torrents to available connections, which torrents to seed and informs the associated trackers of its decision (and what pieces are available).

b A leecher asks a tracker for a piece of that file.

c The tracker checks which seeder is actively providing that piece (at this moment) and replies with an IP.

d The leecher approaches that IP requesting that piece, and that piece only. His expectation is to get it, but no further expectation to receive any other pieces of that file from that IP exist.

Your model involves the tracker much more heavily but it would explain another phenomenon I did not understand, namely how the private tracker keeps track of my upload/download activity.

[DreadWingKnight]

b A leecher asks a tracker for a piece of that file.

Piece requests don't happen through the tracker. A leecher reports itself as such to the tracker at this stage.

c The tracker checks which seeder is actively providing that piece (at this moment) and replies with an IP.

No.

c The tracker gives the leecher a list of IPs that are queueing the seed, myself being one of them.

Queued seeds aren't listed as active on the trackers.

d The leecher approaches my utorrent to request seeding. My utorrent receives this request and, based on some algorithm that assigns torrents to available connections, decides to accept (or reject) the request.

Again, wrong. If the torrent is not in the "Seeding" state, any connection request will be rejected.

You have some fundimental misunderstandings about uTorrent's behavior AND the protocol.

[ovonrein]

Quite right, DreadWingKnight, I clearly do have some fundamental misunderstandings about uTorrent's behavior AND the protocol. That's what this thread is all about. I can say that I read all the - excellent, I thought - BT introduction under utorrent's Help, and I also consulted the FAQs to get to the bottom of what goes on. Unfortunately, whilst you picked and chose individual bits of my guess work that struck you as wrong, you did not reciprocate by giving a correct, full picture. I shall have to do some more guess work, based on your reply:

a utorrent decides, based on some algorithm that assigns torrents to available connections, which torrents to seed and informs the associated trackers (of the now available torrents).

b A leecher asks a tracker for a torrent - the tracker replies with a list of IPs (which are currently seeding).

c The leecher approaches all these IPs to ask their availability (by piece).

d The leecher sends out requests for various pieces of the file to the different IPs, depending on the availability that they have indicated.

e The leecher now has an expectation that he will get these pieces, just so long as the seeders stay around.

f Since seeding is entirely in the discretion of the utorrent scheduler, seeding can stop at any time.

Is this nearer to the mark?

You are entirely forgiven, DreadWingKnight, for not having read what went before. But there are a couple of questions prompted by my recent engagement with a private tracker that remain unanswered:

(1) Will a file, listed as a "queued seed" and fully at the target upload ratio, ever again be scheduled to actively seed by utorrent? When? (In general, how does the scheduling algorithm in utorrent work? Can I tweak it?)

(2) How does the private tracker know how much I have uploaded/downloaded if he is no more than a provider of the initial contact between peers?

(3) If I am the only complete seed (of a torrent) left but have long been at my target upload ratio, how will potential leechers ever meet me? How, in other words, can the seed count ever recover.

Thank you.

[DreadWingKnight]

1> If you have not set uTorrent to stop when seeding goal is reached, it will once again be in the rotation when all other torrents have reached the seeding goal

2> Regular announces. http://wiki.theory.org/BitTorrentSpecification

3> By appointment or by chance.

[ovonrein]

I see. That's useful to know. I thought that I was being a good BT citizen by putting an upload target ratio of 250%. However, since I have *not told* utorrent to stop seeding once the upload target is reached, using such a high target ratio in effect means that older downloads (which have reached their target long ago) will have to wait much longer to be rescheduled all the while younger downloads struggle to get up to the target ratio. So I would be supporting the community more effectively by specifying the lowest possible ratio acceptable to the most demanding private tracker?

This all prompts a philosophical question: is the BT community focus on upload ratios not misguided? is it not more important to focus on active seeding? Perhaps for another thread...

Thanks.

[DreadWingKnight]

http://azureuswiki.com/index.php/User:The8472/Private_trackers <-- major flaws in the entire concept of private trackers.

[ovonrein]

Thank you, sir! This URL has been most helpful indeed. I had misgivings about the goings-on on that private tracker and this URL has put these feelings into words. Perfect. All bull****. I stick with the public stuff - fingers crossed that not all public trackers will go the way of Pirate Bay...

---.---

May I bug you once more, DreadWingKnight, on the subject of seeding? I have been observing utorrent a bit more closely today and I notice that it is currently actively seeding 9 torrents. I have configured a maximum of 4 connections. Add 2 forced seeds accounts for 6. Where do the extra 3 seeds come from? Looking at the utorrent window, it would seem that no more than 4 torrents are actually actively pumping data; all the other active seeds are showing infinite. Looking at the config, there's an option called queue.dont_count_slow_ul=true and another queue.slow_ul_threshold=1000. I suppose that this is the reason for the 3 extra idling torrents? Looking at my upload bandwidth usage it would seem that the 4 actively seeding torrents are pumping very very slowly, staying way below potential. Yet no more torrents are being started. I suppose that is because every one of these slow torrents actually seeds faster than queue.slow_ul_threshold. My question is this: would it not be more sensible for utorrent to continue activating queued seeds for as long as the actual bandwidth remains below max configured? And short of this feature being implemented, would a crude (read: static) approximation suggest that I should set queue.slow_ul_threshold = max upload speed / max connections?