aren't torrent downloads faster when there are multiple people downloading it?
This is just that, someone requests a download, and we somehow schedule when to download it, so our speeds would ....
you know, when you think about it, my idea isn't possible
it sounded like a good idea at first.
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
You.... you don't really get how torrents work, do you?
Let's explore how, just for the fun of it:
1) One "seeder" has a file you want. He is nice enough to let you download it from him. But he has a max upload rate (the speed he can send it to you at). Let's just say it's 20kbps, for the sake of this argument.
2) You want to download the file. If you can get the file from the seeder as fast as possible, you can get it at 20kbps.
3) Oh no! Now 4 of your friends want to download the same file at the same time as you! The seeder's max upload rate doesn't change, though. It's still 20kbps. That speed now has to be shared between 5 people! (Lets assume he's an equal opportunity sharer, and divides his upload speed evenly among downloaders, so that's 4kbps per person).
4) So, by having 5 people downloading at the same time, the download for all of them will take 5 times as long as if one of them was downloading by themselves.
As you can see, it's the seeders who determine how fast a file can be sent, not the people downloading. The more seeders that are present, the faster file transfers go.
Oh.
I thought...
never mind
bad idea
off topic for this but I am using BitThief and I am getting 0.0000000000000000000001 kb/s download speed
Does this mean a lot of people are downloading this file?
Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom
Unless you use initial/super seeding. Then the seed gives each person a different piece of the file, and lets it share it between them. Essentially, in the time it takes to share the whole file to one person, with superseeding the seeder has shared it to everyone he or she is connected to, sometimes resulting in around 40 or so people completing the file at once.
<adelikat> I am annoyed at my irc statements ending up in forums & sigs
Most of the torrents on this site have been really slow for me as well, so I guess it's not a problem with his client.
Only the most recent movies have a decent download speed, which is why I felt the urge to mirror everything asap.
raiscan kind of touched on this by saying everyone finishes at the same time but just to be clear...
If each of the downloaders are able to upload just as fast as they are receiving (I sure hope that each of the 5 people has an upload capacity of over 4KB/s) then nothing is slower. a torrent's initial seeding will only go slower than the seeder's speed if one of the downloaders can't provide his data in a timely manner to the rest of the swarm so that the seeder doesn't have to repeat himself.
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3576)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4754
Location: Tennessee
Actually, it is standard practice at TASvideos to use superseeding (even says so in the publisher's guidelines). I know that I, Raiscan, and Bisqwit always use it.
reply to alden
I use BitThief because I use a computer that our school gave us
It has parental controls
but sometimes it unlocks, so I can download it.
I use BitThief because my system doesn't allow installation of external programs.
As far as slow downloads are concerned, the torrents tend to be blazingly fast for new TASes, but for anything much older than a few months, people have pruned out the list of torrents they're seeding, so the only seed you get is Bisqwit, who has limited upload capacity.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.