General question on how a swarm operates

[Stevel]

Might as well lay out the reason for the question. I am downloading a torrent that has only a few seeds and about the same number of peers - around 6 of each. Earlier today a new peer jumped into the swarm and immediately sucked the swarm dry. The new peer began reporting a very high rate under the Peer dl. column and most other peers dropped off significantly. I personally lost 90 percent of my bandwidth. While I watched my own percentage of the torrent go from low 50 percent to mid 60 percent, the new peer went from nothing to complete. They vanished from the torrent about 20 minutes after they completed it. Bandwidth slowly increased in the swarm after they disappeared.

My question is how is this technically possible?

By the way I am still downloading. Wish I could get that kind of speed out of this swarm.

[ciaobaby]

My question is how is this technically possible?

Only if and when the other peers allow it happen (including yours apparently).

[jamiemelati]

My question is how is this technically possible?

Only if and when the other peers allow it happen (including yours apparently).

And how do the other Peers allow it and how can they stop it? Pray tell?

[ciaobaby]

And how do the other Peers allow it and how can they stop it? Pray tell?

By not having their settings 'tuned' for efficient performance. Bittorrent clients can and will be 'greedy', the general attitude of downloading peers is to get the payload as quickly as possible, so they follow "How to speed up your torrent downloads" videos on YouTube, or so-called 'tutorials' on various sites, which tell them to set ludicrously high values for per torrent connections and global connections, unlimited download speed and severely limited upload, maximum cache sizes etc. etc. All they succeed in doing is making their client hog computer resources and flood the peer connections with more messages than are really necessary, and if the uploading peers are setup poorly as well, the whole swarm can become less efficient.

This applies to ANY and all BT clients not just uTorrent, and it does need every peer operator to understand that what they do is going to have repercussions far beyond the few peers that are directly connected. Downloading as quickly as possible so your client will become another seed is NOT necessarily a 'good thing', having a bit of patience and not grabbing, or trying to grab as many connections as possible for your "must have" job will allow your client and other peers to negotiate the data transfer strategy that is the best one at that particular point in time. Giving a BT client totally unresticted bandwith can make them run at less than optimal, and an unlimited download rate does NOT mean transfers will be as fast as your ISP allows.

[jamiemelati]

And how do the other Peers allow it and how can they stop it? Pray tell?

By not having their settings 'tuned' ........

So are you saying even if you are set up correctly, it still requires all the other Seeds to do the same.

What if you IPFilter a greedy Seed? Does this help?

Sorry I meant Peer.

[ciaobaby]

What if you IPFilter a greedy Seed? Does this help?

It is impossible to have a 'greedy' seed, if you mean a 'greedy' peer, blocking the IP will only lock it out of YOUR client, it will not prevent any problems for the rest of the swarm. Peer to peer, is a co-operative system that really requires all, or at least the majority of the peers to behave appropriately, and to consider the whole rather than the one (the needs of the many ... etc.).

The scenario that you describe in the first post could be avoided by having one or more of the seeding peers in "Super Seeding" (Initial Seeding for uTorrent) where the seed only allows any peer to have a single piece 'in transit' at any time, this reduces the impact that greedy peers can have on the swarm, because they cannot use all or most of the slots that a seed has available.

[Stevel]

What if you IPFilter a greedy Seed? Does this help?

It is impossible to have a 'greedy' seed' date=' if you mean a 'greedy' peer, blocking the IP will only lock it out of YOUR client, it will not prevent any problems for the rest of the swarm. Peer to peer, is a co-operative system that really requires all, or at least the majority of the peers to behave appropriately, and to consider the whole rather than the one (the needs of the many ... etc.).

The scenario that you describe in the first post could be avoided by having one or more of the seeding peers in "Super Seeding" (Initial Seeding for uTorrent) where the seed only allows any peer to have a single piece 'in transit' at any time, this reduces the impact that greedy peers can have on the swarm, because they cannot use all or most of the slots that a seed has available.[/quote']

So me being a peer, I could not do anything to change how the seeds reacted to the new peer.

[ciaobaby]

Nope, you only control what happens on your client.

[jamiemelati]

And how do the other Peers allow it and how can they stop it? Pray tell?

By not having their settings 'tuned' ........

So are you saying even if you are set up correctly' date=' it still requires all the other Seeds to do the same.

What if you IPFilter a greedy Seed? Does this help?[/quote']

Sorry I meant Peer.

[jamiemelati]

What if you IPFilter a greedy Seed? Does this help?

It is impossible to have a 'greedy' seed' date=' if you mean a 'greedy' peer, blocking the IP will only lock it out of YOUR client, it will not prevent any problems for the rest of the swarm. Peer to peer, is a co-operative system that really requires all, or at least the majority of the peers to behave appropriately, and to consider the whole rather than the one (the needs of the many ... etc.).

The scenario that you describe in the first post could be avoided by having one or more of the seeding peers in "Super Seeding" (Initial Seeding for uTorrent) where the seed only allows any peer to have a single piece 'in transit' at any time, this reduces the impact that greedy peers can have on the swarm, because they cannot use all or most of the slots that a seed has available.[/quote']

So me being a peer, I could not do anything to change how the seeds reacted to the new peer.

I never use (Initial Seeding for uTorrent) due to the Help saying only use it if you are the the only Seed.

But I very occasionally use IPFilter, which at least allows me to Upload all my BW to the other Peers under the following conditions; when all other Peers (including me) have a very low "Peer Dl" except one (XunLei often comes to mind).

.

This seems to help things a bit as it allocates all my Up BW to the other Peers, who often appear to respond in kind.

[ciaobaby]

I never use (Initial Seeding for uTorrent) due to the Help saying only use it if you are the the only Seed.

That is the "tit for tat" algorithm doing what it is supposed to.

The speeds in the 'Peer dl.' column are only rough estimates based on the messages to your client. so using that as a guide to micro-managing your client can be a bit hit and miss.

I never use (Initial Seeding for uTorrent) due to the Help saying only use it if you are the the only Seed.

It can also be used by seeds, along with disallowing multiple connections from a single IP to "level the field" on jobs that have a high peer/seed ratio. Again this is up to the seeds to implement, because as with most things speed related in BT. It is the remote end that has the control over the rates that any individual peer can reach.