What is the common overhead one might expect from torrent networking?

[thinker]

For example, I've noticed that a direct connection at HTTP, TCP/IP will use about 88% of the reported connection of the ADSL router with the ISP, assuming no congestion between the router and the server the source file resides upon.

I wonder what the overhead of that nature should be for torrents.

At first, without considering the multiple of connections or the uploading to peers, should it be about similar to the common HTTP download, or smaller or larger?

In the more complex (but common) cases of multiple connections (at least without assuming any uploading to peers), should the overhead be multiple times larger?

Also, I wonder if the multiple of connections are as bad as it sounds, if they are not downloading/uploading and are just idle or only 'pinging'.

[ciaobaby]

HTTP is a 'disconnected' protocol which means there is only ONE request made for every object located at a particular URL and one response from the HTTP server that contains the response code and associated headers, along with starting the download stream to the user agent. The only other communication that MAY take place is if the UA supports and is sending HTTP "Keep-Alive" headers to the server, known as a 'persistent connection'.

The BitTorrent protocol is a connected one so there is constant communications between connected nodes.