Thread: Torrent ratios in general

Greetings,

I am pretty green to the torrent community overall. I am basically looking for more specialized torrent sites, particularly ones with audio and music composition applications. Please bear with me. I have some very beginner-ish questions. (Btw, I'm not fond of the word 'noob', cause it sounds like boob.)

For starters, if I want to respond to an invite giveaway, I understand I have to provide ratio proof. Up until now, I've never considered what my ratio was but it's far below what I think would be acceptable. I see some statements on the internet indicating that 1.5 is a good minimum ratio to shoot for. Is this the case among most of you?

Also, up to now, I've been using the original BT client and haven't explored others like uTorrent. My sense is that I am old school for doing this and should transition over to uTorrent or something else. My question to y'all is, is the transition from one client to the next tricky? How will my old ratio be affected or will I be starting from scratch? Can you point me towards any good sites that ease me into this process and/or explain torrenting in general? One that would help me configure a client app optimally?



Thank for anyone who responds. I hope to learn much from this site!

Originally Posted by Tanuki

I see some statements on the internet indicating that 1.5 is a good minimum ratio to shoot for. Is this the case among most of you?

Yes, 1.5 is a good rule of thumb. Anything lower than 1 is at risk of breaking the tracker's minimum ratio rules. Most of us like to buffer our accounts resulting in ratio's over 5. But there's more than just the actual ratio from proofs that people look for, there's things like user activity and total traffic.

Originally Posted by Tanuki

Also, up to now, I've been using the original BT client. Is the transition from one client to the next tricky?

Windows user? Yeah, uTorrent is the recommended client and is white listed by pretty much every tracker, unlike BitTorrent which isn't allowed on a lot of trackers. Using an unauthorized client can have a large impact on your ratio, usually a negative one, like a tracker ban =]

The transition isn't tricky, but you will have to reload all your torrents and point them to the correct download directory. It's not hard.

Originally Posted by Tanuki

How will my old ratio be affected or will I be starting from scratch?

There'll be no change to ratio. Stats are stored with the tracker. Actually, there might be an effect after you change, an increased ratio =]

Originally Posted by Tanuki

Can you point me towards any good sites that ease me into this process and/or explain torrenting in general? One that would help me configure a client app optimally?

Just use the site's search function. Honestly, the default settings out the box are fine. Just use the setup guide under 'options' and disable DHT, LPD, and PEX under 'preferences'[/QUOTE]

Originally Posted by Tanuki

Greetings,

I am pretty green to the torrent community overall. I am basically looking for more specialized torrent sites, particularly ones with audio and music composition applications. Please bear with me. I have some very beginner-ish questions. (Btw, I'm not fond of the word 'noob', cause it sounds like boob.)

For starters, if I want to respond to an invite giveaway, I understand I have to provide ratio proof. Up until now, I've never considered what my ratio was but it's far below what I think would be acceptable. I see some statements on the internet indicating that 1.5 is a good minimum ratio to shoot for. Is this the case among most of you?

Also, up to now, I've been using the original BT client and haven't explored others like uTorrent. My sense is that I am old school for doing this and should transition over to uTorrent or something else. My question to y'all is, is the transition from one client to the next tricky? How will my old ratio be affected or will I be starting from scratch? Can you point me towards any good sites that ease me into this process and/or explain torrenting in general? One that would help me configure a client app optimally?

Thank for anyone who responds. I hope to learn much from this site!

Well, welcome to the torrent world! It is a lot to handle at once, but it's not too difficult to catch-on to and people here are pretty friendly and are willing to help :D

(A note before we begin that although I will sometimes refer to them as "easier/harder or common/rarer" trackers, we try to not create levels/tiers of trackers as this is very judgmental and subjective)

1) Regarding responding to a Giveaway (GA), people usually require ratio proofs for "tougher-to-seed trackers" but some "easier" trackers don't require any at all. Keep in mind that these ratio proofs are of your upload/download amounts on individual Private Trackers and not the stats from your torrent Client (ie, not the one you did for your introduction into this site). The ratio proofs are pretty much only used to prove that you will 1-Use the tracker (download a lot) and 2-Give back what you take (seed a lot). People don't necessarily look for a great ratio (but keep in mind that many trackers ban members for having low ratios, including <1), but often-times look for large numbers (tens of GB early on, up to hundreds of GB or even TBs later on for the most "difficult to seed/rarer to get invites" trackers) for upload and download (although a ratio >1 is a definite bonus) However, inviters are also more lenient when it comes to invites for "easier and/or more common" trackers.
Since you don't have any private trackers, I suggest you try to find an invite in our 10% section for IPT as it is a solid general tracker that is very easy to build a strong ratio on that you can use for subsequent giveaway applications.

2) As for clients, that is really up to personal preference. Many people like uTorrent but Vuze, Transmission, and Bittorrent are also quite common as well. You definitely are not "old-fangled" for continuing to use Bittorrent, and it is not really an "upgrade" to switch to a different one like uTorrent. It is really up to how you personally like the feel/GUI of each software and you choosing whichever one suits you better. I highly suggest you look around at the others and see which one you like the best. Switching is only 'tricky' if you aren't good at adapting to a new look/feel on software, but even with that you'll still get used to it :D
If you do switch clients, you will lose the 'ratio' that is contained in the client's stats. However, those aren't really that important anyway as people are much more concerned with the individual ratios you have on specific private trackers.
Here is a thread with many links to a useful site called TorrentFreak which has LOTS of information about torrenting in general:
Top 20 Bittorent Tips and Tricks
In addition, searching this site or google will also find you answers to any other questions you have.

Hope this helps you out a bit! Feel free to ask any other questions you have as we're all glad to help!

Thanks buzz and P2P_seeder! This clarifies so much for me. Not having subscribed to a private tracker before, the ratio thing was throwing me off a bit. Your info will help me in researching further, since now I have a better context with regard to how private trackers work and torrenting basics in general.

And thanks for being so friendly to the new guy!

I find ratio means less and less as you upload more, on some trackers I'm on I only have a 1.2 ratio. However I still have over a 1tb buffer on them, I'm going to have to go some to burn through that.

I get a seedbox a few months a year and buffer my accounts, the rest of the year I just use my home connection.

yeah, a seedbox even for a month can really boost your ratios. grab some freeleach BluRay movies and you'll be uploading gigabytes of data in hours.