Thread: Bittorrent supply and demand(long read)

Okay so,I got this from a tracker I'm on. Long reading but bear with it,lol it explains as to why some users can't get a good ratio:


Nearly everything in the world can in some way be related to economics. From the food you eat, the money you borrow, the car you drive, the alcohol you drink, to the shows you watch. The world of economics can be further broken down into two categories:

Macroeconomic - which is the branch of economics that deals with the performance and structure of international, national, and regional economies as a whole. This is the type of economics that you government deals with on a daily basis. It has a major effect on our daily lives; however, it is of not much concern to us in this lesson.

Microeconomic - this branch of economics deals with households, firms, and individuals, and how they interact in a whole. This determines prices of goods and services, such as gasoline, cigarettes, vegetables, lumber, even illegal products and services like drugs and prostitutes. It also affects non-currency exchanges, such as a peer-to-peer network, like a Bittorrent trackers.

With the wide spread application microeconomics it will become plainly obvious to you how it affects everything in your day-to-day lives, including your relationships. One such relationship is how you increase your ratio on ***** Torrents and other private Bittorrent trackers.

The core of microeconomics comes from a simple, yet complex, relationship called Supply and Demand. Using supply and demand we can analyse the relationships among buyers and sellers. For the purpose of this lesson, we will be considering how the relationship of seeders and leechers affects your upload speed and your ratio. The concepts discussed here will be the foundation on getting a quality ratio and the buffer you need to download what you wish.

Be advised that no matter what your ratio is, this does not allow you to get away with Hit & Runs on ANY torrents!


By now you should be familiar with getting connected, and also be familiar with how to your download speeds are affected. We will be examining this further shortly, but for now, you can think of obtaining a high upload speed as the anti-thesis of garnishing a high download speed. The principles are the same, yet having a stagnet ratio while seeding many files still seems to be a problem for many users. Thus, we will be looking into why this happens.

Supply & Demand

Here is where the basics of microeconomics comes into play. Assuming you are connectable, and you have gained the basic knowledge described above, you should be concerned with only one concept when seeding: that is supply and demand. If you can master this concept, you will be on your way to Power User status or above in no time. So what is supply and demand when it comes to torrents? It's rather simple: when you are seeding a file, you are the supply and the leechers are the demand. This makes seeding and leeching is essentially a commodity market. So, to try and make this concept a little clearer, we will juxtapose this concept to a simple concept--a lemonade stand:

Think of a local neighbourhood filled with children all looking to make some money to buy the latest video game. They all come up with the idea of selling lemonade to residents. The first kid who sets up her stand is first on the block and can essentially charge what she likes as there are hundreds of people looking for a lemonade on this hot day. Eventually another kid sees the opportunity to make some money, so he sets up his own stand. He must share the same market with the girl, but since there are still a lot of buyers this isn't a problem. As more kids start opening up stands competition starts. This competition causes one kid to lower prices, which everyone else must match in order to not drive away customers. Eventually there are so many stands and the prices have lowered so much that no one is making any money any more. A select few with a superior product can charge more money than the others and still make a few dollars, but the VAST, VAST majority are loosing.

In the world of torrents, seeding works the same way. This concept is captured in the Figure 1:

Figure 1 - Supply and demand of seeders and leechers

In Figure 1 your upload speed is shown in green, while the number of seeders on the torrent are shown in red. The y-axis represents your speed in KB/s, while the x-axis shows the number of peers on the file. The green line indicates your speed, while the red line show the number of seeders. As you can see there are two red lines, each of which cross the green line. These intersections (points A and B) represent the equilibrium, or the average speed that you can expect. At point A there are relatively few seeders on the file, thus your upload speed is much higher; however, as more leechers snatch (complete) the torrent, they become seeders (represented by the shift to the second red line). This shift is shown to be a second equilibrium point B. Thus, the graph clearly outlines that as more seeders come onto the file, the slower your speed will be. Essentially, you are in a market exchange system, and your client is automatically cutting the price as demand lowers.

Now, it must be pointed out, that like the example with the lemonade stand, where some kids were still able to make money by offering a superior lemonade, some users will still be able to upload a bunch even when the number of seeders far outweight the leechers. This is because these users have a high quality connection, often a fiber optic line, a seed box, or they are just lucky and a kick butt Scandinavian internet connection. Unfortunately, for the vast majority of us, we will not obtain this quality of a connection. That means that arming ourselves with the knowledge of a market economy and the bittorrent protocol will ensure that you have an acceptable ratio for many years to come.



A lack of knowledge in simple supply and demand is often the reason why many users become frustrated when they are seeding many torrents, yet their ratio remains unchanged. By following some of the following steps, you can make sure to avoid some files that should be stayed far away from, unless you have the ratio to eat the download and the non-existent seed you will get on a torrent:


Get on files early! For example, if you download Heroes on Wednesday afternoon, rather than early Tuesday morning, you will be lucky to seed back to half of what you have taken. The reason for this is there are literally thousands of snatches of every weekly program. If you are seeding the torrent after 1,000 people have snatched it, you have no chance of serving the other 200 who are late getting on that file. In an economic term, these files tend to be short lived, high risk/high reward. Get on them soon enough, and you'll be in ratio heaven before you know it. Jump on them too late, and the system will be Leech Warning you before you know it!


Take advantage of FREELEECH FreeLeech files are ones that an admin or a SysOp has flagged as a file that will not count towards your download. This means you can download this torrent without worrying about taking a ratio hit. Grab these. Even if they are older, these files tend to remain popular because of their FreeLeech status. Download it and let it sit for a while. These are another form of a long-term investment.

BE PATIENT!!! You've probably heard the proverb, "patience is a virtue," well this is is no more true in the world of private torrent trackers than it is anywhere else. If you aren't patient you won't see results. Leave that seeded file running for a long time, especially those little known torrents that may not be popular at first. Many around here have achieved ratios that are through the roof by grabbing, for example, the latest House release and seeding it for MONTHS. These are torrents that will eventually pay off big time. You will eventually find a "buyer" if you bide your time.

Thus, as we can see from this lesson, getting quality upload speeds and good ratios is all about simple economics, particularly microeconomics and its heart: supply and demand. Be sure to read up on this some more, as I am sure it will reap rewards your understanding of the economy and human relationships in general.

Remember: be patient, do not cheat, think before you download!

Thanks for the insightful explanation, Ureshii.
I also would like to point that grabbing a popular file, like this summer's block buster (dark knight anyone?), tend to be a good "investment" as many many people will want to watch and/or re-watch not only now but in the future too.
Btw, I'm off to "invest" in some files :P