aristobrat said:
Is there a way with Transmission or Azureus to stop sharing after you hit a certain ratio? My computer never goes to sleep because of this. I don't mind oversharing, but when it's like 20 UL to 1 DL, I'd rather have it quit and let my system sleep.
Don't remember if Transmission has it, but Az has an ignore feature for torrents meeting certain requirements. It's in the Queue option of the Preferences, under Seeding. Check out the "Ignore torrents that have a share ratio of..." option.
Keep in mind that BitTorrent is NOT a download-only method of sharing
The protocol works in that you have to be sharing in order to download most effectively. The more you share, the better your download speed should theoretically be. If you end up uploading like 3x what you wanted to download, you need to find another place to get your torrents
Also, the torrent is never going to go any faster than the amount being uploaded. In an ideal world, and in certain private torrent communities, the swarm speed can go into the several mB/s, but otherwise, you're not going to be downloading more than whatever the people you're connected to have, at the speed they're uploading to you.
If you find that you consistently get really crappy speeds, try these:
1. Make sure
your ports are forwarded correctly.
Portforward.com has instructions for many routers, including the Apple ones. You can verify this on some trackers (connectable/clever/...sometimes they list port numbers if you are and nothing otherwise), or with certain torrent clients (I think Az and BoW, as well as the mainline client (official bittorrent one) can show you - although mainline only shows you how you're connected to the peers, but that's just as good). Port forwarding is
very important, as this determines the peers you connect to and how fast you connect to them. i.e. if you can't connect to a seeder, you have to rely on peers who are to get the files from the seeder, which slows you down even more if you're not connected to a lot of peers, etc. Do
NOT use the default ports of 6881-6889. Instead choose something between 1024 and 65535. A lot of sites block the default 6881-6889.
2. Before you grab a torrent,
check the number of seeders (the peers who have 100% of the torrent) and leechers (the peers who have not yet completed the torrent). If there's 1 seeder uploading at 10kb/s to like 40 leechers, obviously it would be slow.
3.
Check multiple trackers for the torrent you're looking for. Make sure the torrents aren't using the same tracker (a site that keeps track of torrents, the peers on the torrents, etc.), you might be able to find a few torrents where one tracker has more seeds on a similar torrent compared to another tracker's different-but-same-content torrent.
4. Check to
see if it's a private torrent. Most private trackers and their members are
very anal about non-members using torrents from their site, and sometimes require that uploaded torrents have special info in the torrent about where to get information about a peer and such in order to restrict usage by non-members.
5.
Upload. Upload, upload, upload. Restricting your upload speed to <1kB/s isn't going to help you unless you're the only leecher on a torrent with 100 seeders. It isn't going to help you from a realistic point of view considering how peers do not upload as much to you if you don't send them anything in return (or, you send them bad data..which is worse).
The best upload speed to set it to is 80% of your average max upload speed. Some clients like Az have plugins where you can have the max upload speed in your torrent client change based on the time of day, if it's too much of a hassle to change it yourself. But the 80% is in order to not saturate all your available bandwidth. If you upload beyond what your connection can handle, your download speed, as well as your regular surfing the web (like to MR forums
) will suffer mightily. Keep in mind however that most ISPs worldwide advertise their speeds in kb/s (bits) and not kB/s (bytes), and most torrent clients choke your speeds in kB/s or kiB/s. If you get something like 8000/512 on a speed test, divide the 512 by 8 and you'll get a rough estimate as to what your max upload from your ISP is in the right measurement. Upload settings can be found in every single client. Dig around in Preferences, etc.
6.
Seed. This isn't going to help you downloading, but if you were frustrated while downloading a torrent, why not help out and share a little bit. Usually the best ratio (uploaded/downloaded ratio) to seed to is around 1.0, where you upload as much as you've downloaded. On private sites, just seed as much as you can.
7.
Limit the number of torrents you have open. The more torrents, the less effectively you'll be able to upload or download. Take it easy, 2-4 torrents downloading at a time is a good number, although it's pushing it a little if you're on a slow connection. If you're seeding, unless there are no leechers, don't have too many torrents open. Make sure you're connectable for all the torrents (although, a blue/yellow face in Azureus is okay if there are no peers).
8. On the same note as #7,
limit your max upload slots per torrent. Start with 2-3, and as your upload speed is higher go up, but not much higher than 10 (unless you're on FIOS). This will ensure that if you do upload, you're going to be uploading a lot to a smaller number of peers, raising your download speed. (Transfer preferences in Azureus)
9. Similarly to #8,
limit the connections per torrent and globally, if you can. A good number to start at is around 100-200, go up as your upload/download speeds go up. (Transfer preferences in Azureus)
10.
Check your ISP. Some of them dislike the usage of BitTorrent, and hence block/filter info from the known BitTorrent ports (6881-6889) or any data sent from a BitTorrent client. In that case, if it's for a legitimate use, get Azureus, and turn on encrypted transport in Preferences > Connection > Transport Encryption.
11.
Update your client. Old versions of clients are usually old for a reason. Check the respective developer site for new versions, or turn on automatic updating/update notices. Some sites ban all clients that are more than a minor version different from the current version just because older versions are unstable/insecure/doesn't support certain features. If your client is too old (like, half a year old..or based on the last major version of BitTorrent), go get a newer one. (*coughs in the direction of BitsOnWheels*)
Hopefully some of those hints will help you guys
