Specific questionings about Share Ratio issues

[Drealm]

Hi. It's my first post, so I'll try to be clear.

First, I want to know if it's normal that my uploading is slower than my downloading. Both are always set "unlimited"; my download sometimes reach 500 kb/s, but my upload never go beyond 110 kb/s. So my total share ratio never reach 1.0, it's always around 0.4 or 0.5 . So I want to know if it's normal to let utorrent seed without downloading (to reach 1.0) or if it's my connection or ISP that cause my upload to be slower.

Secondly, if nobody can know our total ratio, what can motivate a leecher to stop being a leecher? I know that some private tracker monitor our upload/download. But as far as I know, public trackers can't monitor you so you can leech all you want without anybody knowing it. So is it simply the good will of us p2p users to seed properly? IF NOT, please someone professionally explain once and for all how exactly having 1.0 total ratio really change something (aside from private trackers or feel guilty). If possible, clear and complete explanations would be very appreciated.

Thirdly, I read somewhere on internet that trackers (public or private, no importance) know the share ratio of each files we have (but don't know our total ratio). And based on that, they mathematically decide our priority and the speed of our downloads. Once again, that's not very clear. For example, the way I manage my torrents is that I only keep for seeding those that are under 10 seeds to help maintain them alive and help others get the file faster. After a while, many of them never reached 10 seeders so I have them from the beginning of my p2p life. Some of them are now at a 3.0 ratio and more. SO, are these 3.0+ ratio files helping in any way in the mathematical calculation of my priority/speed? Or is it only the files I'm currently downloading (and seeding) that are used in the calculation? Or both? Or maybe that mathematical calculation pattern is not even true?

So, I really hope that I can get good answers about all that because i'm tired of searching internet and never really get answers.

Thanks in advance for the ones who will take the time to answer.

Drealm.

[DreadWingKnight]

First, I want to know if it's normal that my uploading is slower than my downloading. Both are always set "unlimited"

Bad idea. You need to intelligently set your upload based on your connection's capabilities. Leave the torrents running after they complete to make up the difference.

Secondly, if nobody can know our total ratio, what can motivate a leecher to stop being a leecher?

Only making swarm conditions as uncomfortable to leechers as is possible.

I read somewhere on internet that trackers (public or private, no importance) know the share ratio of each files we have (but don't know our total ratio). And based on that, they mathematically decide our priority and the speed of our downloads.

False.

[Switeck]

Your ISP probably only gives you a sustained 1 megabit/second UPLOAD bandwidth max...but download bandwidth max may be 10+ TIMES that!

The ratio on 1 torrent has no effect on any others, except for maybe getting you banned from a private tracker.

Peers will upload progressively less to you if you give them almost nothing in return on that torrent. While on small torrents or torrents with lots of peers, that won't "hurt" your download speed much. On huge torrents with 20 or fewer peers and only a couple seeds, if you don't upload quickly peers will instead upload to another peer that does!

Also, uploading too slowly will cause peers to quit uploading back to you FAR quicker...so don't think you can split your upload speed really thin to at least LOOK like you're sharing to everyone.

Each upload slot on every torrent ideally needs 3 KiloBYTE/second upload speed for other peers to be "happy" with you...and almost always return the favor. This means if you're running 10 torrents with 4 upload slots each, then your MINIMUM global upload speed needs to be at LEAST 120 KiloBYTES/second! Reducing upload slots to only 3 per torrent, or individually lowering some torrents' upload slot max to 1-3 can reduce the needed global upload speed to meet all the demands...BUT by uploading to fewer peers, fewer peers will be interested in returning the favor quickly.

[Drealm]

Each upload slot on every torrent ideally needs ...

Presently, my utorrent default setting is 25 slots per torrents. Is it too much? I must reduce it to 4 or 3? If that's utorrent default, why is that if the programmers of utorrent obviously know that? Why put the default to 25 instead of 3?

if you don't upload quickly peers will instead upload to another peer that does!

How can they do that? Is it manual or automatic? And how can I do that? As far as I know, I can't stop or reduce seeding to a precise peer, I can just stop the torrent from being active (right click-->stop).

Only making swarm conditions as uncomfortable to leechers as is possible

How do you manage to do that? I'm not very familiar with the "swarm" term. Can you explain more?

[Switeck]

You're using the wrong settings in uTorrent for your line...HORRIBLY WRONG!

Yes, uploading by peers/seeds is handled automatically. They prefer to upload to peers that return the favor. (Tit-For-Tat rules part of the BitTorrent Protocol...though some clients don't follow the rules like they should! Even uTorrent's is slightly broken but better than most.)

Torrent swarm = ALL the peers+seeds on that 1 torrent.

[BlueDragon]

Share Ratio: As a general "good practice" rule you should at least give back as much as you have taken e.g. reach a share ratio of 1:1 Personally I set my goal to 1:1.5 in average but 1:1 being the minimum except if there are plenty of seeds for a couple of peers (like seed/peer ratio of 15-20 for instance). I think it's a good idea to seed "intelligently" by having a look at the real need of the swarm. So say if after I just finished my download for torrent A there's almost no peer interested or there is a seed/peer ratio >1 and I have another torrent B where there's a big need (seed/peer ratio <1) for seeds than I will give the priority for seeding torrent B and take care of torrent A at some later time (days or weeks). Finally when I have reached 1:1.5 share ratio for any given torrent, than depending upon the need I will keep it in my job list for further seeding or I may kick it out for cleaning up purposes, otherwise I soon have hundreds of torrents left in the job list and that's far too much for me to be able to keep an overview... (Ok you may label the torrents and classify them with F7 but it's not enough versatile IMO). I don't know if it's a question of feeling guilty or not but one thing is clear and mathematical: if everybody would only seed back up to 100% and nothing more than imagine how fast the data could be passed over. Theoretically there could be only one seed at a time and the bittorrent community would soon be dead. So give and take! (It's like in the rest of the life, at some point it comes back to you, call it Karma or whatever you want... )

Private trackers do track and remember your share ratio. Public ones could do it as well even if it's claimed that they are not doing it... :cool:

[Drealm]

Thanks to all of you for your answers, it's very appreciated.