the problems of the Bittorrent protocol.

[ismahill]

this seems like the right place to put this,

if anyone would have this thought in mind, (concerning Initial Seeding) why it is so slow.., why the protocol is not using all of bandwidth potential.., than this "article" might try to answer some of these questions...

the major property of the "BitTorrent" protocol is its speed dependency..

it doesn't matter how fast your connection is but rather, the Uploading speeds of all other peers in the swarm..

there seems to be many contradictoinal matters concerning this protocol,

as one reaches to it, it might seem a bit obscure and even cumbersome due to the fact that

it is very much dynamic, because it is depended on all the other connected clients to fullfill itself..

one node might be giving speed of up to 10MBps while others might share, no more than few KB, implementing, a deduction of speed for all others..

the main issue here is,

is not using the full capacity of the connection but rather a paced amount of it, which will allow uploading and downloading at about the same speeds..

if one downloads in a speed of about 10Mbps while he/she upload at few houndreds of KBytes, (lets say 250KBps).., the speed looks great though, but at a download speed of 1.25MBytes per second.., he manages to take about 5 times the speed he gives!! and actually choke others they're speed (and eventually his..)!

that is the same for the slower connections..

he might be seeding later on.. sharing with up to 50 peers.., giving a high speed.. while actualy, he will be giving each about 5 KBps which is isn't that much, compared to what he has taken before by it..

i think that the amount of difference between Up&Dn speeds is what actually creates a lot of instability in the connections..

speed is going up and down, new peers are coming, others are going.. and every small thing, has it's impact on the whole.. people should be aware of that, while they are sharing with others..

if u ask u'r, why is that, that initial seeding isn't working so good, it slows down the connection, it's taking it longer to track the peers and seeders and actually, to start up..

u might find, that these things are tightly connected to it, cause as long as people are downloading in a faster speed than they are uploading (regardless of seeders..), initial seeding as a "factor" which is "supposed" to give a better speed, order and robustness to the connection, will never be able to fullfill it's potential..

if u might, try thinking of a client, a server (let's say) who is initialy seeding a bunch of peers on a specific file, each one of them, is supposed to be getting a different packet at the time, and then, transfer it on to a second peer who hasn't got it yet, so, there is a certain amout of control over the connection, seeders are giving what they are supposed to be giving and peers, get what they supose to be getting, a charm!! now,

what happens, if the download and the upload speeds are different?

actually, a peer will be recieving a packet, he will transfer it on at a lower speed.. recieving another packet.. see? it is being choked by that..

so a fixed upload&download speed within a connection, is much better (to all the swarm, cause u'r not acting alone at this and all peers are volnurable to this irritation) than a one who has a large range between these two..

the problem,

is that, it will never come to that,

cause otherwise,

there wouldn't be any need for any seeder.., which as explained, in an sterile connection within a swarm, it will only slow it down..!!

so, maybe it is, that initial seeding is actually unnecessary.. cause in the corrent way that this protocol exist (which is perfectly o.k actually), there would never be same upload speeds as download speed..

it seems that,

people are just not using it properly ..

and the best connection, will be one, which there aren't any seeders in it, but rather peers that have the whole file and sharing it constantly at the same speed!!

each one is sharing at a 1:1 ratio, and everyone is getting exactly,

what he/she gives.

that will be a truely perfect connection,

harmonious one.. .