on file acquisition

[egypturnash]

Hmm. BitTorrent gets much better download speeds when you play around with the maximum upload rate. It went from maxing out my connection at something around 20 K/second upload, with around 90-95 K/s down, to around 150 K/s down in return for a mere 10 K/s up. Plus the rest of the system stays snappier. In fact, throttling it to 1 K/s up is still getting me about 150 K/s down.

So much for "tit-for-tat"!

Comments

[milkpanzer.livejournal.com]

Finding anything cool?

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

A little.

[neillparatzo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've noticed the same. Someday everyone will realize the same thing, and then BitTorrent will become useless, or at least until the next big p2p thing comes along.

Enjoy and make the best use of it while it lasts!

[siddacious.livejournal.com]

or, those of us who know about it could be generous with our bandwith for the good of bt. or not.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I really only use BT once every few months. The pickings for Mac users are pretty slim, and there's not much Mac-specific stuff I know of. I think most of the Mac action nowadays is on some other weird-ass P2P setup that rather demands lots of uploadable data before you can access the things.

I mean, yeah, media files, but I'm just not interested in TV shows, and they usually turn into Codec Hell for me.

[siddacious.livejournal.com]

strange. that seems to totally oppose the whole idea of bt, though from a tech viewpoint, it makes some sense (i think).

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Funny, isn't it.

I was doing this because Ashy woke up, and I didn't want to eat all our shared bandwidth. If she'd stayed asleep another half hour I never would have discovered this. I wonder if it's a hole in the algorithm, or a result of the very very asymmetrical nature of a home DSL connection...

Result of a combination of things...

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

Asymmetrical connections will always download faster than they upload.

If you're only able to get 20-40k downstream even when pushing 20k upstream, reducing your upstream to 10k or 1k probably won't increase your downstream at all. There's not enough people out there to push data to you.

The 'trick' you found only works on a well-seeded torrent (which is a definition to go into of it's own) when you're running out of bandwidth to ACKnowledge the incoming packets you're already getting. It doesn't work if, for example, there's only two existing seeds on home DSL lines. But generally, if there's 4, 5, or even more seeds for every non-seed when you check the stats, yeah, cap your upstream heavilly and 'go with the flow' until you're done, then get off the pot.

[unciaa.livejournal.com]

Actually, that largly depends on how many seeders there are. High upload rates can cap you because your line gets saturated, so with a lot of seeds, lowering the upload will allow you to take advantage of the lost speed.
However, with downloads that have few, or slow seeds, low uploads will murder you. There, you will not ever get less than a 1.0 ratio, and more likely than not get higher one still. If you cap those to 1kb/sec, you're boned. :)

I personally set my upload to 15kb/sec. With a 384bps upload I have plenty to spare, give something back and don't have to worry about accidentally downloading as sub speeds because my speed is too low. I have however at times managed to get +250kb/sec from certain torrents when I upped it to 25.

[barberio.livejournal.com]

If you are lucky, both your network card and ADSL router will support QoS (Quality of Service) Tagging. You will need to enable it in the drivers for the card, as most do not automaticaly switch it on. (Due to some domestic hardware not co-operating well with QoS)

This will set 'levels of service' on IP packets so some will be prioritized. This will mean that ACK packets should get priority over normal trafic, and a high outbound will not flood your inbound.

Alternativly, if you use Linux of FreeBSD you can use AltQs to prioritize these packets yourself.