Can only upload when downloading

[SteveRock]

Hello,

I am using a VPN that does not have port forwarding, so I understand I will not get optimum performance, and can only connect to those peers that ARE using port forwarding properly. My download speeds are fine; my problem is with uploading. It seems that my client will only actively connect to peers that it wants to download from, and at that point will exchange pieces with them. As I get closer to 100%, it actively connects to fewer peers, and thus my upload speeds start going down considerably (because of course, they cannot connect to me due to firewall issues). Once I am at 100%, no uploading goes on, so I am unable to seed.

Does my take on how uTorrent behaves sound correct? If so, is there anything I can do to make the client actively connect to peers it wants to upload to?

Thanks

[kotekzot]

how big and popular are the torrents you are seeding? utorrent will get new peer ips about every 30 minutes, if there are few peers and the torrent is small it's possible they are completing the download before you can connect to them to seed.

i think there might be some bias for peers to download from other peers instead of seeds if possible, so that seeds can concentrate on distributing pieces with lesser availability, if there are many distributed copies around peers might prefer each other over seeds.

[SteveRock]

Yeah, the torrents don't have too many peers. But I believe there is something to what you said about peers actively seeking out other peers, since if I delete the completed torrent, my upload rate goes up again (once I get some pieces, of course). This is a private tracker (http://www.worldboxingvideoarchive.com), so I wonder if it is the *tracker* doing some of that prioritization (it seems weird that a client would be "selfless" enough to not seek out seeds). Something is funky with the tracker anyway, as uTorrent always shows 0 seeds/peers from it, even though I get peers from DHT/PEX. Updating the tracker does not seem to help. I also wonder if it has anything to do with the special UTP protocol. The fact that the seed:peer ratio is pretty high contributes as well (everyone is trying to increase their ratio). Probably a combination of things, so I'l never be able to isolate it.

Are there any clients that give an easy-to-read display of the actual traffic with the tracker? I'm pretty new to private trackers. They are sort of a pain in the ass; I understand the need to keep people seeding, but when one of the biggest challenges is finding torrents with few seeds so that you can keep your ratio up, it is a bit ridiculous. I've downloaded just about every "free" torrent on the site (where only your upload traffic counts), even though I'll never watch them, just to keep my ratio reasonable.

Thanks again.

[DreadWingKnight]

This is a private tracker

All bets are off.

[SteveRock]

Interestingly enough, I see someone had the exact same problem a few years ago: http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=62707

Looking at my log, I am connecting to peers send sending them "have" messages. And removing the VPN does not seem to make much of a difference. May be the tracker, but I will have to figure out what the tracker could possible be doing, since I seem to be connecting to peers. Maybe I'll grab an open source client to look at the guts of what is going on.

[kotekzot]

it's possible for the tracker to shape the swarm in such a way by prioritizing peer ips over seed ips in announce replies, but that seems pretty unlikely. it's not really selflessness if the peers are able to max out their dl speed with other peers. if it's a private tracker it's entirely possible downloads get finished before you get their ip via announce.