55.8% and holding and wondering why?

[Fire Monkey]

Ok, I have been sitting at 55.8% done for the last 5 days - most of that time I see seeders listed as 0(2) and peers as 4(17) or something similar - occationally I get seeders as 1(2) but most of the time that 1 either doesn't seem to allow donloading or I get [and I'm not kidding] speeds like 0.2k for a few minutes and then they go away. Now I did reach the 55.8% because of a seeder [had been at 30 something and a seeder connected for a while with a speed of about 40k and boasted it up] but all in all, this seems to be most un-friendly behaviour - now in the last 5 days I have staye connected and quite a few people have downloadedd from me but it has been quite one sided and I'm starting to wonder if this is typical. Understand that I am new at this whole torrent thing so I don't know what is normal to expect - but 2 things are striking me ... first, almost all the time there has been a significantly larger number of people in brackets that I don't seem to have any way to connect with - am I missing something here? Is there something I should be ddoing to make my system connect with their system? I thought all that wwas automatic,,, and 2, it seems that a lot of people, even when they have relevence, choose to take but not give - and if so, that rather defeats the whole concept of torrents doesn't it? Maybe I'm just unlucky with the particular torrent I happen to be trying to aquire at this moment but if this is typical, it seems to me that the whole system is rather flawed by the human element.

So I guess I'm really asking 2 things - 1) is this just a bad example of an typically better experience and 2) is there something I should be doing differently that would improve my chances in moving past the 55.8% done point?

[DreadWingKnight]

Availability is showing as what?

[Fire Monkey]

Well, of course, most of the time it shows as .558 except wwhen I have a seed of 1 or more at which time it goes up past 1 and on the odd occation even without a seed I have an availability as high as .780 for a time depending on which peers are connected. At one point when I was about 53% done I had a peer connect who brought availability to .78 or so but while they were happy to upload from me at a speed of about 80k I as only able to download from them at about 6k and as soon as they had gotten all that I had to offer, they disconnected. This seems in my limited experience to be typical. At the moment I have seeds 0(1) peers 5(13) available 0.558 and 2 of the peers are uploading from me ... this is fairly typical of the last several days. I do know that there are peers out there with more of the torrent than I have since they have connected ith me previously but they always seem to greatly limit the speeds at which I can get from them and stay connected only so long as I have bits they lack hich they grab at much faster speeds - thus showing me that it isn't a matter of a connection problem but rather a choice on their part to limit sharing. Then too, there are at least 4 seeders around [that's the most I've seen with this torrent at one time] but almost never can I connect with any of them. Thus, availability remains limited because I don't seem to be able to connect with those who have more.

[Switeck]

Set its upload speed to 1 KB/sec, upload slots to 1, priority to LOW...and start other torrents.

...Then just hope it finishes on its own.

Check it occasionally as well for signs of improvement.

[Fire Monkey]

So in other words, all I can do is hope and pray... Ok, well, hopefully this is just a case of bad luck and not typical of the way things go or else it seems that torrents are more a way for me to provide the gready with another stooge since I actually don't limit others from getting the torrent and thus whatever I happen to have can be gotten by all - which I thought was the general idea behind 2p2 sharing. Sorry if I sound a tad disgruntled but at the moment it feels like the majority of those I have dealt with are all take and no give and to me, that is not right and in the long run, also not smart since if that's the wway things go then over time, it will simply kill torrents all together since there will be no point in anyone sharing if they can't expect to also receive. Well, maybe the next thing I try to get will go more the way such things should and my opinion will change but so far I have only seen an ugly side and 2 wasted weeks, since I can't do anything with 55.8% of something. About all I can say is that because I tried to get this torrent, there are now dozens of people with 55.8% of it since I have had at least 1 person at just about any given time downloading what I have from me.

Sorry, I'm not generally quite so negative sounding a person.

[Switeck]

Yes, at some point you're counting on the kindness of strangers -- and they can be fickle!

However never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity...or something like that.

Many of them use bad settings. It's worth a laugh to go watch random YouTube "uTorrent speedup" videos on the subject, for just how stupid those settings can be!

Or they follow the false belief that "best speeds" come from setting GLOBAL upload speed to 1 KB/sec while downloading and then unlimited when seeding.

Also, some torrents SHOULD die. There may be better copies easily available or the torrent is simply trash. It's impossible and unreasonable to share everything. Upload is still a precious commodity the world over with few exceptions...it is our printing presses. It is good to know what yours is saying about you!

Until torrents came around, file-sharing has generally been a hit-or-miss affair. Many if not most random downloads...failed. Even torrents were deemed likely to die in days/weeks from exactly the greedy behavior as you're describing. It depends on the community you're getting torrents in. I have good luck with public torrents/trackers without any great effort, though I've seen a handful out of 1000s that were very poorly seeded. Getting them from places which mention in advance roughly how many peers/seeds are on the torrent as well as short posts about the quality of the torrents...is better.

As far as sharing is concerned, there are lots of crass people in the world...sometimes they seem to congregate...often they're the noisiest. Are they the most common? I think not, we're still here.

There's not an easy solution with many people on very hostile-to-BitTorrent "ISPs", people with bad settings, people who don't want to share, and people who simply don't know any better...than stop their BitTorrent client after their download finishes.

You've done what you can...and more so than most. Ironically, it's not always helpful...as you've noticed now more are stuck at the same percentage. Don't feel required to upload your 55.8% indefinitely. We help others when we can AND want to. Forced charity is slavery.

[Fire Monkey]

I suppose that if it hadn't been a case of the first time I try to use torrents to get something this is what happens...... oh well, in this case the item I am trying to get is not available any other way - no other torrent [found the same torrent listed on every torrent site I could locate - that is, uTorrent told me with each one when I tried to start it that it was the torrent I was already downloading and asked if I wanted to add the tracker info or some such message as that] and it is not available in any other format - in short, other than this one torrent, it can't be had for love nor money. The frustration I feel is in knowing that the complete torrent is out there but I can't get it because I can't connect with the handful of people who have it. Believe me, I did understand from the start the significance of seeing the sites I found the torrent on list it as having 4 seeders and so I knew it would be slow, but I had not expected to have seeders connected but the download choked, etc.

Ok, you suggest stupidity - I think in some cases the evidence suggests against that but I'll buy it as the explaination in most cases - partly because I have often seen a lot of stupidity, partly because I know it took a lot of careful reading to figure out settings [which is something that might be a good thing for someone to try and solve - most people who use a computer are bairly computer literate so a "settings for dummies" file that is short and to the point would be a good thing to have in the help files with the program], but mostly because I'd rather think people where stupid than to think they were unfriendly.

I started my second ever torrent, something a bit less rare I suppose - 36 seeders and peers connected and 29 are choked so I can only download from 7 - 80% set so they can't be downloaded from ... a LOT of stupiditty I guess still I'm told by the software that the estimated download time is under 2 hours if this holds so I'm not complaining.

[Switeck]

Peers only upload to a tiny fraction of the peers they're connected to at any given time.

Upload slots per torrent are the number of other peers they upload to at once.

If upload slots is 4 but you're connected to 100 peers, that means you're uploading to 4 peers...but NOT uploading to 96 peers. In such a case, there's a fair likelihood that some peers would see you as "leeching" even though technically that's not true.

For seeds, in some ways this problem is even worse...since they ONLY connect to peers. They often appear to not upload at all to many of their connected peers. Peer connections to them can easily time out from inactivity before they send them anything. This is a flaw of design AND the idea that more connections are "better".

[Fire Monkey]

That's actually useful information well explained - thanks, it means maybe things are better than they look in general. In any case, the second torrent I tried for only took about 4 hours to get and given the size, I'd say that's not totally unreasonable so my faith in the concept is improved some by that. Mind you, in general I ould only use torrents to get things I am unable to obtain other ways and thus I suppose I'm likely to most often be looking for hard to get stuff and therefore I fully expect it to take a little longer.

[Switeck]

Also, trackers may report 4 seeds...but some or all of those could be the same seed that changes ip addresses very rapidly. Typically something that's changing ip addresses...isn't a good or fast connection either.

[Fire Monkey]

That was the good part of the old p2p systems in which you connected directly to a single user whom you selected and got a file which they had available - mind you, that worked best when file sizes were realatively small so that it would take 10 or 15 minutes to get a file. Multiple sources have obvious benefits but clearly there is also a downside and a degree of confusion that comes with it. Too bad it couldn't just be very fast servers with a lot of bandwidth that had libraries of everything you could ever want sitting there for you to download for free - that once was the dream of computers you know, before business men realized there was a buck to be made. Ah well, who am I kidding, we live in a orld driven by profit and people like me who don't care about money so much are the odd-balls rather than the norms, so I guess we have to go for what there is and do the best we can. Thanks for taking the time to help me understand the hole torrent thing better - it does help to know a bit better how things work.

[Switeck]

The amazing thing about BitTorrent is not that it can be very fast...but that it works at all.

It is being attacked from all sides:

1.ISPs

2.copyright/media groups

3.hostile users with horrible settings

MANY people don't share as much as we might like for them to because their ISPs have rotten monthly bandwidth limits, BitTorrent throttling, firewalled conditions, and contention.

[Fire Monkey]

I can unerstand if one has limited file transfers with their isp or if you have a very limited bandwidth - it makes it hard. I was shocked at how poor internet service in the us was [my daughter works in the telecom field so she has a lot of facts and figures that I didn't know] I guess I tend to assume that Canada is typical and it turns out that is not true - in fact, we have the highest average bandwidth per user of any country and the highest percentage of internet useage in the world - which I hadn't known - anyway, when I found out how many people use dial up - well, that explains a lot too, since dial up is virtually a thing of the past in Canada [about 85% of all internet in Canada is broadband an most dial up is for specialized use] anyway - as you say, many things work against it.

Too bad the courts buckle under to businesses - when copyright first was created [which was in the publishing industry long before film, etc, existed] the law makers specifically stated that it was not and never would be to protect profits - it was in fact created to stop publishers from ripping off other publishers because what was happening was a publisher would print a book and one in another country would buy a copy and quickly typeset it with a different title page and a different author's name and print the book and sell it - copyright was created to stop that practuse so that the intellectual property of one person could not be stolen by someone else and presented as their's and sold by another. The point was to prevent a second person from making money off of the first person's work but NOT to protect the first person's profits and sales.

From the start, businesses wanted to have the law changed to help them protect their sales and profits and the courts refused. When tape recorders came out he music inddustry tried to get the law changed because people could record music off radio or records and they lost, when cassette tapes came out they tried again, movie and TV industries tried when VCRs appeared and they failed - books, records, movies - they all have copyright statements on them which are in fact not legal statements but rather a mixure of selected quotes from the law mixed with their own non-legal interpretations of the law [which they know the courts have rejected] combined with statements that sound like they mean something but are acually legally meaningless [like "will bring the full weight of the law to bear..." which actually means absolutely nothing but sounds scary] and then came the Napster trails and suddenly a US judge flys in the face of every ruling that had ever been made in any court in any country from the start and suddenly the music industry in the US has what they wanted - copyright law is protecting their profits ... interestingly that ruling does not actually apply to anything except for music, though it is argued that movies, etc, are "just the same" - legally they are not the same until a court says they are and so far that hasn't happened and although there have been lawwsuits, there have not been any court cases - that is to say, the cases have all been settled out of court - the industry knows the Napster ruling was a fluke and even the music industry doesn't want another case to go to court for fear of it being over turned so right now we all sit in a legal limbo - technically copyrighted material is most likely illegal to share in the US but it hasn't actually been ruled on except for music and therefore it might not be but no ISP would take the risk of getting caught up in it and no individual could afford to either so effectively it is the same as if it was illegal even though it is not exactly illegal and definately based on the rulings of courts all over the world [including the US courts] in the past should not be illegal.

But money talks so I guess it shouldn't be a surprise. Interestingly though, if copyright as stated in books [well, haven't read a copyright notice in about 30 years so "old books"] was in fact law - libraries would be illegal and in fact, it would be illegal to buy a book, read it and lead it to a friend. Likewise with music, if the music industry got what it wanted, when you buy a piece of music it is for "personal listening" and therefore you can't lend a CD to a friend - same goes for buying a DVD and lending it - or resale of books, CDs or DVDs - or libraries lending any of those things - video stores I think have to pay a fee based on the amount the rent so that's how they are covered. But second hand stores are not illegal, nor are libraries nor is lending to a friend, etc, because so far the law has not become what the industry tries to pretend it is.

To be honest, I'm not sure what the status of sharing any specific sort of files in specific countries really are because the various industries have muddied the waters so much it has gotten almost impossible to know where legal ends and intimadation begins. I know US law has no meaning outside the US and I know a lot of stuff said in the US has nothing to do with the law and everything to do ith trying to scare people into oing hat the industry wants. For myself, I figure, stay away from the whole mess - which I suppose means that their tactics have worked on me, sadly. Still, I'm an artist, I respect an honest copyright because I respect the work of other artists - mind you, I also notice that the people holding the copyrights generally are execs who wouldn't know the first thing about creativity if their lives depended on it and the people who's blood and sweat go into creating get pennies while the suits get rich, so I wonder how valid a lot of these copyrights are, but I buy music [well, there isn't much new that interests me - OMG - I'm my father! They stopped making music in the 70s ] I buy movies if I want to keep them, I am willing to buy TV series - no, it's things that can't be bought, can't be found else where - that's what draws me here.

[Switeck]

Copyright dates back to the British crown...I think even before 1600. It was a form of governmental control and another source of taxation. In many ways it still is...just more controlled by industry 'governments'.

Canada's claim-to-fame for broadband/internet usage...it really doesn't have one. It's not the worst by far, but likewise it's a ways from the best. I've had pointed out to me how Bell in Canada has been extremely anti-competitive. I visit TekSavvy's forum at Broadband Reports to hear the latest of how Bell is crippling them. Bell's throttling FAR MORE than BitTorrent...and being very unfair about it. They wouldn't even admit to doing it at first!

The USA is a really mixed bag for internet. Less than 5 miles from where I am, about the only things available are dial-up and satellite. Ironically, some of the major cities (Chicago, New York, San Francisco) has pretty sorry consumer broadband services -- often due to 1 big ISP being given "franchise"/monopoly-like status there. Some Co-Op based startup ISPs in small towns is probably the best, but big ISPs are using every trick they can (legal AND OTHERWISE) to destroy them. Industry buy-outs and deals have served only the industry players involved if even them!

Speeds aren't all they're cracked up to be. The average cable connection may have increased immensely in top speed over the last 10 years, but some of the technology remains the same. Typically 100-500 cablemodems are sharing the same limited 38 megabit/sec TOTAL download channel. It may have been sold as always on, but it definitely cannot be always active at much faster than dial-up speeds. In many regions, these same customers are sharing a 9 megabit/sec total upload channel. Such ISPs are really hating the idea of interactive and/or video/audio broadband use. Even peak evening hours with predominately web surfing and email customers swamps them. The technology is still frightfully expensive. Fiber-optic lines are often measured in $'s per foot. Send/receive fiber equipment easily costs $10k-1m. If the lines are underground, laying new lines can cost a fortune too. If the lines are above-ground (on poles), the ulitity fees are still bad.

Wireless is no solution, with the way it's currently being run and the very limited frequency ranges it's limited to. If contention is bad on cablemodems, it's horribly bad with wireless. Many wireless broadband ISPs don't really qualify as such -- restrictive use rules, pathetic monthly limits, HUGE overcharges, permanently firewalled, and terrible customer service if things go wrong. Satellite ISPs are typically just a bad form of wireless...the choice of LAST resorts.

ISPs that are also media companies (which pretty much ALL cable companies are) have huge conflict of interests. (For instance, Time Warner was shown to be spending ~$40 million TOTAL for bandwidth costs for all its internet links...and something like $500 million for tv programming costs.) Cable companies have a vested interest in protecting their expensive tv business even if it means sabotaging their own internet customers by blocking/disrupting/throttling BitTorrent. Their system supports about 120 6mhz analog tv channel spaces. With digital tv, a single old analog 6mhz channel can be split up into 1-10 digital channels of various resolution/clarity quality...or 1 single internet download channel or 1-2 upload channels. To compete with satellite tv's vast array of channels, cable companies have typically resorted to squeezing as many tv channels in as they can...and cramming 1000+ cable internet users into 1-8 download channels and 1-8 upload channels. Upgrading areas to support larger channel ranges or adding separate support lines is rather costly, so the fraction devoted to internet remains small even as more people than ever are signing on.

"Network neutrality" laws and regulations would seem to help, but very few have been well-crafted. ...And most have big industries "helping" write such laws. I have low hopes that anything passed ends up being consumer friendly.

[Fire Monkey]

It's true that the roots of copyright goes way back but I was speaking of the direct copyright law - that is to say, the law we currently use as opposed to the law it is based on, and in particular, international copyright since that is the thing which is most important on the internet. That isn't so old as the common law it was based on but the principle remains that the modern law had never been intended to be what the industries want it to be - it is intended to prevent one businessman from stealing another businessman's intellectual property and making a profit from it but it is not intended to protect the profits of the holder of the copyright. That was really the only point I had been intending on making. The law actually doesn't care about alleged "lost profits" but only about illegal gains that someone might make - or at least that was the intent and up to the Napster case that was what the courts around the worl had always upheld. Oh well, lawyers will do what lawyers will do and there is little the common man can do about it in most cases - except perhaps to vote for politicians who think the way we do [if such exist] and hope that makes a positive change.

I remember back before the internet hen it was all dial up BBSes and of course, UseNet and FidoNet and people thought we were moving towards an age of freely shared information, ideas and media. Most people seemed to have the idea it would be like TV - everything for free [well, I guess they never really understood TV either ] There was the idea [as seen in a lot of SF] that if you wanted movies or music or art or books or TV shows or whatever, you would just dowwnload it all for free - oh yes, and in a matter of seconds because there would be public servers with massive bandwidth [i guess that idea was to reflect an updating of libraries] but somehow it never really quite turned out that way. Those who try to freely share such things often are left looking over their shoulders andd having to hide - not in every country, but in many.

Mind you, it didn't turn out like politicians expected either as they have discovered that "policing" the internet is mostly impossile and that nobody really has jurisdiction as such over the internet itself. It's an imperfect world and so much of it falls through the cracks.

Now as for internet/broadband useage. First, BellCanada is not the sum total of internet in Canada - just one company. Here in Vancouver I have a choice of at least 6 different ISP [those being the ones who keep trying to get me to go with them] - some cable, some ADSL - I compleatly ignore AOL as an option [i think they are still around although to be honest it's been a couple years since I have gotten advertizing from them so maybe they gave up - back when this area was more than 2/3 broadband, all AOL had to offer here was dial-up and they wanted about the same amount of money as I was paying for 1.5 GB broadband - I heard they started offering broadband but then I stopped hearing from them all together] Anyway, I know that in the Vancouver BC area specifically both Telus and Shaw [the 2 main ISPs] guarentee no less than a 1.5 GB bandwidth on normal accounts [although you can opt for less if you want a special "light" account for those who need email access but don't use the internet past that - however, they don't advertize the light accounts - that's what they bring up if the fail to sell you on the internet - a last ditch sales thing] Almost everyone I knoww with Telus has a 2.5 GB bandwidth or more so I tend to think of that as a default and sometimes forget that not everyone has that much. In any case, as far as any actions that might be taken to interfer specifically with torrents - that I don't know although I do recall here that Bell Canada did something like that and Telus had thought about it but currently felt it was no a wise business move - but I put that purely in the catagory of rumour and gospit at the moment as I have never heard anything from a source I know is "informed".

I do know that the times are changing - I get telephone, internet and TV from Telus and the number of people doing that is growing enough that Shaw [the main local cable company] is really starting to hurt - man, even 10 years ago, how many people would have guessed that people would be getting their TV over the phone lines? All these changes will eventually effect things like torrents - for better or worse I don't know, but I am sure there are changes that will effect us.

[Switeck]

"Almost everyone I knoww with Telus has a 2.5 GB bandwidth"

Say WHAT?!

You mean 2.5 megabit/sec download bandwidth or 2.5 GB daily/weekly/monthly bandwidth limit?

[Fire Monkey]

I'm talking bandwidth, but perhaps I have a gig where it should be a meg - understtand I started when 4 kilobyte was a sgnificant file size and 300 baud was a high speed modem so it's hard to keep adjusting to the ever changing sizes of numbers

I'm speaking of bits per second in any case, the 2.5 I can say with absolute certainty - just a sec - I'll check [i know, I could just do all this and then rite a post with hat I found but - ell, you're geting it simulated real time ] - ok, my ISP offers bandwidths of 1.5 Mbps to 6.0 Mbps ... so I had a G where it should have been an M - sorry - get the blood racing there for a second?

So almost everyone I know with Telus has 2.5 Mbps and that's 60 GigaBytes per month unless you pay for a higher amount. for about 37% more you can have 15.0 Mbps and 100 GB/month except that service is not compatable with Telus digital TV [not sure why exactly] and I for one like my TV over the phone lines better than cable [and not because it seems weird, though it does ]

Ok, a question - I'm noticing on my torrent that caused me to come here in the first place that currently there is a peer who has 72.7% of the torrent - obviously I want to get stuff from them, in the flags they had D which shows my system wants to download and their system is ok with that [unless I have misunderstood something] and I have in fact managed to get intermitte nt donloads - some as fast as 8 kB/s but it then slows down and stops and sits for a time and then after a few minutes it starts again and so on. Is this normal and if so, why? Does that just mean that this person is willing and able to share but they are sharing a bit with me then saring a bit with another peer and then another, etc, and then back to me? Or am I guessing way off and if that isn't hat is happening then is there anything I can do that would make this connection more stable?

[Switeck]

Yes, they're probably sharing at random to peers. ...But not sharing particularly fast.

If you spot the ip, you can probably do a whois lookup and determine what ISP they're on. That alone can explain many slow speeds.

There are other possible reasons why their speeds are slow:

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=56580

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=56897