Thread: Does having faster upload speeds make you the prefered seed?

If there are 10 seeds and 1-2 leechers, and 9 of the seeds have regular home connections, and 1 is a fast seedbox, and if they all had the same client, and same client settings..... would all 10 seeds upload roughly the same amount?



Or is the fastest uploader heavily prioritized by the bittorrent software?

Say I am seeding something on say, a 100 KB/s upload line, and its maybe a 600 MB file, and there are maybe 6 seeds and 1-2 leechers, but I am only getting like .7 KB/s of upload.

So lets say there are 4 seeds and 1 leecher:

The leecher has a download speed of 1 MB/s

Seed A uploads at 250 KB/s
Seed B is also 250 KB/s
Seed C is 250 KB/s
Seed D is 2,500 KB/s

Does Bittorrent "spread it out", or does it say to seeder D, hey youre really fast, I'm just gonna download most/all of it from you and ignore the others. Or would all 4 seeders tend to get roughly 1/4th of the pie?

Well normally bittorrent protocol favors the user with high speed...so if you have a 100mbit and other are on like 10mbit...you can upload more then any other user....so more upload speed== more upload...

oh in your example the user D is gonna get more upload....but there are always other factors like no. of connections and other small things... ;)

I don't know if that answered the question, or if my question is just a different one, but I think it's the same question haha. I'll just phrase it differently.

So, we've all had a scenario where we're frustrated because there are still leechers on a torrent, but we aren't uploading anything to them! Is this based on speed (i.e. the leecher's client connects to the fastest ones it can get connected to) or something else? Of course if you have a faster upload speed you'll up more data in the same amount of time, but you can't upload anything if leechers don't connect to you.

Originally Posted by glasshandle

I don't know if that answered the question, or if my question is just a different one, but I think it's the same question haha. I'll just phrase it differently.

So, we've all had a scenario where we're frustrated because there are still leechers on a torrent, but we aren't uploading anything to them! Is this based on speed (i.e. the leecher's client connects to the fastest ones it can get connected to) or something else? Of course if you have a faster upload speed you'll up more data in the same amount of time, but you can't upload anything if leechers don't connect to you.

Yea, that is what I was getting at. If you're much slower, do they simply not connect to you at all.

From how I read the answer, it seems that the answer would be that yes, they will sometimes ignore you altogether if you are slow. But if clarification could be given, so that there isn't any misunderstanding, that would be great.

One scenario I had was when I uploaded a 2.58 MB file. Obviously after the first person leeched, I had 2.58 MB of upload. Within an hour, 8 more people had leeched it. I was seeding the whole time, and my upload bandwith was not being consumed by anything else. What was my total upload at the end of it all? 2.64 MB. One person had 6.6 MB of upload for this file, and they were like, the 3rd one to leech it.

Yes, seeders with a faster connection is likely to be connected to more peers. The whole point of bittorrent is to share the file within the swarm as quickly as possible so it's only natural new peers are connected to the quickest uploaders. There are obviously other factors as well. Packets tries to find the shortest route between point A and B so if you're somewhere at C or D, it's unlikely you'll get much upload.

If you're the super-seeder (initial seeder) it's a completely different story since you'll be the bottleneck.

Short answer: Yes

Long answer:
When it comes to bittorrent, the more "chunks" or pieces of the torrent you have, the more likely it is that your client will find someone who wants some of those pieces.

Once enough of those pieces are being downloaded so that your upload rate is maxed out, no more of your pieces can be leeched from.

Thus, you won't be uploading as much as someone whose able to simultaneously have 5000 pieces being uploaded to many leechers.

BT favors faster speeds, so if your pieces are being downloaded by peers but at very slow speeds, and BT finds someone capable of uploading that same piece but 100x faster, then it'll happily drop you in their favor.

I hope this answers your questions.

thanks el and kon, I think I get it now haha

thanx for answering this guys.. I would also like to add that some trackers have issues with certain locations i think.

On waffles my seedbox was usless for uploading. while waffles is difficult to seed on in the first place, they also have banned certain ...servers???... and you can download but not upload. i have had people hang on me and one other person. i was not uploading at all and the other had a very slow speed.

moral of the story is there are a vast and complex list of reasons your not uploading, and it may have very little to do with you speed.

this probably doesnt help your situation much but im just piutting it out there. if anyone knows more about this or if im wrong please feel free to correct me.


have fun guys.