Bunch of ingrates

[pne]

Ever since I got a nice quick ADSL upstream (1024 kbps -- fast enough for me), I like to keep my BitTorrent client open when my computer is on, to seed the things I downloaded.

Now, a little while back, I downloaded an open source DVD and an open source games CD provided by a German computer magazine. I was a bit surprised and disappointed that there was no BitTorrent option (I ended up using GetRight to download in parallel from several of the mirrors -- getting those out of the web page with its autorefer pages but no mirror URLs in plain text was hateful, but that's another story -- and for its resuming capability), so I created a .torrent file with Azureus and uploaded it to The Pirate Bay.

It didn't take long and I had some peers downloading both files.

Now Azureus tells me I've uploaded the games CD 9.7 times over and the DVD 4.6 times. That means that several machines should have a full copy now, shouldn't it? Yet it tells me that there are 1 and 0 seeds in the swarm, respectively, which I interpret as meaning someone downloading the ISO and then disconnecting.

Bunch of ingrates.

(Perhaps I was too idealistic. This was the first time I seeded something, and perhaps this behaviour is to be expected, and/or I'm misanalysing the data.)

Comments

[jc.livejournal.com]

The BitTorrent community is saturated with hit-and-run incidents, either through fear of persecution, ignorance or sheer selfishness. I make it a rule to maintain at least a 1:1 ratio on public torrents (0.5 where the swarm is healthy), and I seed for as long as possible on private sites where my ratio matters most.

[kake]

I hit and run on things where there are obviously plenty of seeders; I concentrate on seeding things where the seeder:leecher ratio is very low. There's no gain in me continuing to seed something that has 6000 seeds and 2000 leechers, over something that has no seeds and 30 leechers.

[fledchen.livejournal.com]

I generally seed until my ratio is 1.5-2.0 on public torrents and until the torrent expires on private torrents.

[pne.livejournal.com]

My current rules are "seed to 1.5 as a first priority, then seed to 3.0, and seed further only if there are two or fewer other seeds".

(I haven't used private torrents, yet.)

[kake]

How many peers are there? I think some clients only actively seed when they can see someone wanting to download. Also, seeding 50 things at once isn't very efficient (due to the overhead caused by the protocol), so again many clients have rules that restrict them to seeding 4 or 5 things at a time. It's possible that if your torrent isn't very popular then other torrents are getting priority there.

[pne.livejournal.com]

How many peers are there?

Typically around 2-8, with the average being about 4, I'd say.

many clients have rules that restrict them to seeding 4 or 5 things at a time.

Makes sense; I have similar rules in my client, after all.

I assumed, though, that a client which was not actively seeding a torrent would still be "registered" with the tracker, though, and merely choke all incoming connections -- and so would still show up on the "number of seeds" thingy.

Also, my rules have an exception for torrents with very few seeds (which get priority even if there are also few peers), but I suppose not everyone does that.

[ifeedformula.livejournal.com]

I love that icon. I wish somebody would bigify it and turn it into a teeshirt. *teehee*