Alternate upload rate when not downloading doesn't work properly

[naugas]

uTorrent never make use of the "Alternate upload rate when not downloading" setting as long as there are torrents in a downloading state, even if they are not active. Expected/preferred behaviour is that this setting indeed should be used if there are no actual downloads going on.

[Ultima]

Hm, my opinion is... Slow downloading torrents are unpredictable, so you might switch in and out of alternate upload rates very constantly, so the alternate shouldn't be used unless NO torrents are in downloading state, even if they appear to be going slowly.

[naugas]

I wouldn't say that the torrents I'm currently downloading "appear" to be going slowly, since I've been the only peer at them for some time...

But I think a better implementation of an alternate upload rate would be to do make it work the complete opposite way. It's only on few occasions I need to lower my upload some - mostly if I happen to connect to a peer that can max out my download. Up till downloading at 3-500 kB/s everything works fine, but to be able to max out at 2 MB/s I need to lower my upload from 90 KB/s to 65. But that is not often. So I would like to see a setting that lowers my upload rate as I'm reaching higher dl speeds.

An even better solution to all this would be to automatically tune the upload speed according to network latency, like the auto speed plugin for Azureus. It works simply beautiful, always maxing out the upload speed and compensating at-the-fly for other network activity like browsing, ftp transfers, instant messaging, games - everything. I and others have suggested this before (since version 1.3 something), but never seen a respons with valid arguments why it's not a good idea to have this functionality.

[Switeck]

A torrent which you are the only peer and there's no seeds means you CAN'T be uploading to or downloading from someone else...and µTorrent should be using the "Alternate upload rate when not downloading" speed setting. This is an EXTREME case of 'slow download torrent'. And it sucks too...I've been there myself.

Yes, it would be nice if µTorrent had a sliding upload rate based on download speed -- high if download speed is low, low when download speed is high.

Network latency is often measured by pinging big websites every few seconds. Couple the fact that potentially 1,000's of people would end up doing that at once...and it becomes a Distributed Denial-of-Service attack on that website, even if it's an unsuccessful one. That's a Really Bad Idea.

[naugas]

Tha Azureus auto speed plugin by default pings the first server on a traceroute to google. That distributes the connections very well, and there is no problem with anything looking like a dos-attack. You can also configure it to ping some other server on the traceroute hops.

Anyway, the current "alternate download rate" shouldn't be used if it's not needed, which is the cause here. Still, even if it's working as intended, the way I see it, it limits upload for no reason most of the time. And in my opinion that's very bad - clients should work in the way that available bandwidht is used as much as possible.

[Switeck]

I can achieve 1-5 KB/sec faster upload while not downloading. It does no good to set regular upload speed (while downloading) high if all it does is make web surfing slow AND doesn't achieve the speed limits set.

I often leave µTorrent running unattended for 8+ hours on end, so there's fewer times when it is downloading than most people.