Thread: Seeding not taking full advantage of my upload speed

Heys guys,

I'm trying to become a better seeder, and need your guys' input. Here is a sample speed test:



I'm seeding 32 torrents right now and have a total upload speed of about 270 kb/s at the moment. Not that bad, but it's not taking full advantage of my connection. I'm confused because I look at peers for certain torrents that I'm seeding, and there are 5+ peers and I'm not connected to any of them. This is for a lot of trackers, like waffles, bitspyder, iptorrents, hd-space and hdme. Why is this? Do I need to change some settings in utorrent? in windows?

Does "killing the disk" relate to me? Or does it only affect seedboxes? What is it?

I'm on Fios and using their provided router, the Actiontec mi424wr. I've read online that this router has a small NAT table of 1K. Could this be the reason for my problem?



Thanks in advance.

Sometimes, there just aren't any users downloading from you.
Just because you're "Seeding" doesn't mean you'll actually be uploading anything. Seeding means that you have 100% of the torrent downloaded already. However, if nobody is downloading any pieces of the file from you, then you won't be uploading any, and you won't be using all your upload speed.

Also, your upload speed is also dependent on the other peers' download speed. If they can only download very slowly, then you will only upload to them at the speed that they can download.

First off, go download a very popular torrent and check if the reason you're not maxing out your upload is because no one is download from you.

I don't think it's your router because overflow of the NAT table is very obvious: every so often, your upload speed will drop dramatically, then quickly come back up. It sounds like you have a steady, but slow, upload.

Killing the disk refers to slowdowns due to the hard drive not being able to keep up with the internet connection. Since hard drives read/write at minimum 640 Mb/s, you're well under the speed.

To maximize your upload, try increasing the number of upload slots and the number of connections to something drastically higher.

Originally Posted by buzz

Sometimes, there just aren't any users downloading from you.
Just because you're "Seeding" doesn't mean you'll actually be uploading anything. Seeding means that you have 100% of the torrent downloaded already. However, if nobody is downloading any pieces of the file from you, then you won't be uploading any, and you won't be using all your upload speed.

Also, your upload speed is also dependent on the other peers' download speed. If they can only download very slowly, then you will only upload to them at the speed that they can download.

I was under the impression that peers were people downloading the files, and seeds were people seeding the files. So when I see 9(0) peers I see it as, there are 9 people downloading the torrent, and I am connected to 0 of them.

Originally Posted by tentonwire

First off, go download a very popular torrent and check if the reason you're not maxing out your upload is because no one is download from you.

I don't think it's your router because overflow of the NAT table is very obvious: every so often, your upload speed will drop dramatically, then quickly come back up. It sounds like you have a steady, but slow, upload.

Killing the disk refers to slowdowns due to the hard drive not being able to keep up with the internet connection. Since hard drives read/write at minimum 640 Mb/s, you're well under the speed.

To maximize your upload, try increasing the number of upload slots and the number of connections to something drastically higher.

Thanks for that information. I'll try increasing the number of my upload slots and number of connections.

My question is why on sites like waffles is it so hard to seed against seedboxes? Is it because their connection is so fast that by the time I can get connected to a peer, they are done? but, why can't I connect as fast as the seedbox and get atleast some upload?

Originally Posted by Pissyfits

I was under the impression that peers were people downloading the files, and seeds were people seeding the files. So when I see 9(0) peers I see it as, there are 9 people downloading the torrent, and I am connected to 0 of them.

Lot of reasons why you can't connect, most of which you can't control: NAT (firewall), their download slots/speed is maxed, their encryption settings don't match yours. If you passed the port forwarding test, you've done pretty much all you can.

Originally Posted by Pissyfits

My question is why on sites like waffles is it so hard to seed against seedboxes? Is it because their connection is so fast that by the time I can get connected to a peer, they are done? but, why can't I connect as fast as the seedbox and get atleast some upload?

It's not the connection time that's the problem; you probably connect at nearly the same speed as the seedbox. There are two reasons seedboxes will make your life hard:

1) They download super fast, so they'll finish the download and start seeding long before you finish downloading and start seeding. This actually isn't that bad, except for the second part...

2) Their upload speeds are way way faster than what you can do. Say for example there is one leecher, a seedbox, and you seeding. The leecher is going to ask both you and the seedbox for a chunk to download, but since the seedbox uploads so fast, the leecher finish its chunk and ask for another from the seedbox way before it ever asks you for another chunk.

By the time the leecher finishes, the % of the download from the seedbox is going to equal however many times faster the seedbox is at uploading than you are. If you have a 5Mbs speed and the seedbox has 1Gbps, that's 200x faster, so you're going to upload 1/200 of the full torrent size.

Of course you're thinking the leecher can't download at 1Gbps, and that is true. However, the cloud of leechers can be thought of as one leecher, and certainly all the leechers combined download faster than 1Gbps, so the above stays true.

Since it's usually more like 10 or 15 seedboxes, your % of the total upload is (your upload speed)/( sum of ALL the uploaders speed, including the seedboxes). Thus, you get a tiny tiny tiny fraction of the total upload. On super popular torrents the total upload is so big it doesn't matter, but most torrents aren't that big.

Originally Posted by Pissyfits

I was under the impression that peers were people downloading the files, and seeds were people seeding the files. So when I see 9(0) peers I see it as, there are 9 people downloading the torrent, and I am connected to 0 of them.

Peers are just everyone in the swarm. 9(0) is backwards, but yeah, you get it.

Go to Options > Setup Guide

uncheck 'bandwidth'

upload speed choose 2 Mbit/s

use a port range between 49152 - 65535

Run tests to make sure your ports are open

Somewhere in your preferences, disable DHT, Peer Exchange, and Local Peer Discovery.

Go to options > preferences > bandwidth

Max upload rate 216

Max download rate 0

Global max connections 515

Max number of peers 206

Number of slots 7

Go to options > preferences > queueing

Max active torrents 3

Max active downloads 2

Unfortunately that's about the most you can do since your upload speed is so poor. You said you got 270 kB/s right? Well, that's pretty good with your connection.

Originally Posted by P2P_seeder

Peers are just everyone in the swarm. 9(0) is backwards, but yeah, you get it.

Go to Options > Setup Guide

uncheck 'bandwidth'

upload speed choose 2 Mbit/s

use a port range between 49152 - 65535

Run tests to make sure your ports are open

Somewhere in your preferences, disable DHT, Peer Exchange, and Local Peer Discovery.

Go to options > preferences > bandwidth

Max upload rate 216

Max download rate 0

Global max connections 515

Max number of peers 206

Number of slots 7

Go to options > preferences > queueing

Max active torrents 3

Max active downloads 2

Unfortunately that's about the most you can do since your upload speed is so poor. You said you got 270 kB/s right? Well, that's pretty good with your connection.

Is my upload speed really that poor for a home connection?

Anyway I've seen my upload speed at 500+kB/s, why would I limit it so low?

Thanks for your reply.

Yo Pissy,

Check out Glasnost: Test if your ISP is shaping your traffic. There's a test to see if your ISP is throttling BitTorrent traffic. There's a chance your ISP is reducing your bandwidth on BitTorrent ports.

Originally Posted by roamer

Yo Pissy,

Check out Glasnost: Test if your ISP is shaping your traffic. There's a test to see if your ISP is throttling BitTorrent traffic. There's a chance your ISP is reducing your bandwidth on BitTorrent ports.

Thanks, just ran that and it says there is no indication that my download or upload are being throttled.