0 seeds in Uploading Torrents - need help with terminology please.

[wilykit104]

I'm not sure if this is a troubleshooting issue, operator error, or me just not understanding the terminology, (probably the latter) but any advice you can give would be great!

I'm fairly new at the whole concept of downloading and uploading torrents and recently switched from Limewire to uTorrent when I realised Limewire's limitations. I have read the faq's, uTorrent's User Manual and several glossarys, but I'm finding it difficult to wrap my head around all the terminology, so please have patience with me and speak in layman's terms!

So. I've just made a new torrent, uploaded it to mininova, trackers are working, and the file has started uploading (it says "Uploaded: 256kb" in the general tab). However, in the seeds column, it says (and has always said), "0 (1)", or in the general tab, "0 of 1 connected (1 in swarm)".

What I want to know is, am I the the (1) in the swarm, and if so, does this mean I am not connected? How am I seeding (or am I seeding at all) if I am not connected? Mininova says there are now 2 seeds and 7 leechers, so it must be working, and someone must have been able to download already, I would just like to be able to understand what all the numbers mean. :-/

(This is also the case with some of the files I have downloaded and continued to seed. They are seeding/uploading, but the number of seeds says e.g. "0 (643)".)

Also, the Peers' entry in the general tab says: "2 of 17 connected (7 in swarm)". What does this all mean please? The glossary says that a swarm is people connect by the same torrent file, so if there are 7 in the swarm, how can there be only 2 connected, and where do the other of the 17 fit in to the equation?

Very sorry for being so ignorant, but I don't like not knowing how things work or what they mean, so any explanations would be very welcome! :-) Hope you can make head or tail of all this!

Thanks.