Why do some peers stay stuck with high completion (98%) ?

[Sum~guy]

I was downloading a torrent recently, and some of the fastest peers that I was connected to were curiously stuck at 98.1 to 98.4% completion (in other words, they did not seem to be trying to reach 100% completion).

I'm wondering why that would be.

(and PS: If posting the IP's of peers is not allowed here, then why isin't that listed in the posting rules?)

[DreadWingKnight]

It might not be that they aren't trying to reach 100%, but rather that the availability of who they're connecting to won't let them complete.

[Sum~guy]

I was downloading the torrent at a combined 700 kbytes/s. It was 1.4 gb in size. It took me about 1/2 hour to download. I downloaded half of it last night, stopped the download (shut down my computer) and resumed it this morning. Both times (last night and this morning) I see 5 to 10 peers that are stuck at 98.1 to 98.4% completion. The torrent has about 200 seeds and 600 peers.

Some of these 98% peers make quick, transient connections to me, and when they do my upload speed to them is .1 kb/sec. Meanwhile I'm downloading from them at anywhere from 50 to 250 kbytes/sec.

Normally when you download a torrent, the peers that you're connected to are making steady progress towards 100%, even if it's slow progress. Given this torrent, where quick progress is assured, I'm wondering why I'm seeing a handful of peers stuck curiously at 98.1 to 98.4%.

[j7nj7n]

If the torrent has several files in it, maybe these people have unselected some of them. I've seen cover artwork, subtitles or NFO files been unselected, even if these files are relatively small. It could be that they amount to one or more complete pieces and thus will never get downloaded. They will still make connections when partial seed and waste traffic. The shade of the availabily bar together with the files list sorted by First Piece gives a hint as to what people may be missing. If you find a way to connect only to those people (a banlist, limit of peers per torrent low) you will see for certain which pieces they have.