Seed Upload Bandwidth Balancing

[mendicant]

Long time Azureus user trying out µTorrent for performance reasons...

(I appologize if this question has been addressed previously, but I couldn't find anything that dealt with my problem using search.)

I dedicate 40 kB/s for BT uploads, and have approximately 10 private, continuously-seeded torrents for which I am often the sole seeder, in addition to any uploads associated with new downloads.

On Azureus, the upload bandwidth seems to balance the available upload bandwidth approximately evenly (prioritizing somewhat based on ratio, availability and number of peers.) I expect, for instance, that 10 uploads get approximately 3-5 kBs each.

With µTorrent, I see that the current download gets allocated about 25-40% of the upload bandwidth, and some seeded torrents are starved out.

e.g.,

Name Seeds Peers Up speed

==========================

A 0(1) 2(3) 0 kB/s

B 0(1) 0(1) 0 kB/s

C 0(1) 3(3) 7.1 kB/s

D 0(4) 2(2) 5.8 kB/s

etc.

I've kept an eye on it for a while, and torrent "A", for instance, can go for long periods of time without any uploads. The tracker is registering me as an available seed, but the peers don't seem to be making progress.

Any idea on what is going on? Thanks.

Merged double post:

I'm getting more balanced results now.

I juiced the number of connected peers (global and per torrent) and rebooted. Somehow a combination of those two did the trick.

Downloading torrents are still getting upload bandwidth priority, though. I'm currently spending 19 kB/s out of 35 kB/s on two downloading tasks, with the remaining 16 kB/s divided between 8 seed jobs at between 1.5 and 2.5 kB/s each.

I have the option "Seeding tasks have higher priority than downloading tasks" checked, but it doesn't seem to do anything useful.

Any insight would be much appreciated.

[Firon]

You're running WAY too many torrents at once for so little upload.

[mendicant]

That may be, but I should be able to get 5 kB/s upload per torrent, not 15-15-1-1-1-1-1-0-0-0-0, etc., especially when there are more connected peers to my seeded torrents, than my downloading torrents.

The other alternatives are to stop downloading entirely or to abandon the seeded torrents and let them go dead. Which is preferrable?

BTW, we're talking about relatively small files (~5-25MB) so d/lers make their ratio quickly and stop seeding. I'm not so worried about how long it takes to send the completed file, but availability. These are support files for a program I've created, so demand is low, but constant.

[Firon]

You can always try to cap the upload for the downloads, or set an upload cap and put the two downloads as low priority.

[mendicant]

Okay. I tried capping the uploads, though I guess I was hoping for something that would require less manual management.

The priority system had no effect. Downloads always seem to dominate upload bandwidth despite the checkbox in the preferrences dialog or torrent priority. In fact, the behavior is slightly worse when I set the downloads to "low" and seeds to "high"

Thanks for the help, though. I do appreciate it. I just must have different needs or expectations from the average user.

I think I'll just have to keep slogging through these micro-management settings. It's entirely possible the amount of control I want over my torrents just isn't going to be available in a lightweight client.

[Switeck]

I've had the same problems too, with seeding lots of RAR files (~3-20 MB torrents). One hogs, the rest starve.

I gotten slightly better results with manually setting them to 1 upload slot each...and hoping they use it.

I have to keep my upload slots overall low, or any new torrent download will get the lion's share of my upload bandwidth, which maxes out around 35-42 KB/sec.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

The other alternatives are to stop downloading entirely or to abandon the seeded torrents and let them go dead. Which is preferrable?

Let them go dead. For the majority of users, downloading simply has a higher priority. If you really are the only seeder for your files and are uploading at all of 5K, people are getting it at a trickle. That means they are patient - patient enough to wait 2h while you download something for yourself.

If people really want something on BitTorrent, they are often quite willing to put up with zero to near zero flows for a week, especially if they see some guys that have something (but not all). I'm serious - I've done that.

In fact, they'd probably be happier if you cycled through your uploads rather than try to supply them all evenly at your creep rate.

And I must be the only guy for which Bandwidth Allocation works (at least somewhat).

[mendicant]

All good ideas. Thanks for the feedback.

I think what I want is a maintenance seed. So if the availability of a torrent is > 2.00, I can safely stop seeding and use the bandwidth for other things, but if the availability drops < 1.00 I can join in nd make sure nobody gets stuck.

There are all kinds of things wrong with this idea: potential for abuse, the need to stay connected to peers for an idle torrent, etc. It'll never happen - nor should it - but sometimes I think that's what I really want. To make sure that nobody gets stuck at 99% with no hope of ever finishing, while only stepping in when needed.