Download speed vs upload speed

[shyam2618]

Hi guys,

while downloading using torrents, how does our upload speed affect the download speed?? or at the first place does it affect??

 

[MysticMiner]

Depends, some trackers could be set to favor seeders over leechers.

 

[JDFan]

With a torrent client if you do not set the upload speed to a limit lower than your Maximum -- it will saturate the connection speed trying to upload as much as possible -- The problem with that is in order to download you need to maintain a connection with each system that you are downloading from ( for asking for specific pieces and acknowledging receipt of those pieces) and if your upload bandwidth is saturated you can not maintain that connection (the downloading system will timeout waiting for your responses and disconnect you)

So you want to make sure you set your Upload speed to around 80% of your maximum upload bandwidth so you have enough headroom to maintain those download connections or your download speed will drop !!

So to answer your question --- the upload speed will not effect download speed directly unless you are maxing out your upload bandwidth and not leaving some headroom for communicating with the other systems in which case your download speed will drop and you will not get decent download speeds.

@mysticminer -- you are a bit confused on seeders\leechers --- A seed is a person that has already downloaded 100% of the file and thus is just sharing -- while a leecher may also be sharing but has not yet downloaded 100% of the file (Always bugs me when people comment about the lack of seeds when leeches are also sharing they just do not have 100% of the file since they are still downloading but as long as they have pieces you do not have yet are just as capable of speeding up your download as a seed would be !! )

 

[MysticMiner]

Nope. I'm not confused, I know what I'm saying. We may be using the terms differently, but that's not because either of us is confused, but because we aren't using the exact same language. I would consider a leecher somebody who does not upload back, while a seeder is somebody who does.

If you use the terms differently, fair enough, I don't, but I can respect how you might, but the point I was making was that there are responses to the people who don't upload back. Or in some cases, to reward those who do upload back.

And people DO complain about that problem, since it does happen.

 

[JDFan]

OK -- just was not sure you were aware that the tracking software that show Seeders\Leechers only counts a system that has 100% of the file to be a seeder and everyone else is listed as a leech - whether or not they are in actuality sharing so the stats you see listed for downloads does not reflect the actual ratio of sharing to non-sharing systems ! (many less educated users will complain based on the stats the trackng software shows of the ratio of seeders to leeches thinking that leeches are only taking and not giving which is normally not the case -- in order to not share back you would have to set your upload limit to zero (which not many users will do !) or very low -- the real problem I see is all of the people that do not setup their upload bandwidth to limit the number of connections the system will make and thus are sharing to 100 systems at 1kbs instead of limiting themselves to say 10 connections so they can give 10 kbs per connection average for that same 100kbs upload bandwidth and thus everyones system has to maintain more connections and lose more bandwidth to maintain all of those connections slowing everyones speed.

If you take a few minutes and set up your software properly you can usually get very good download speeds on most torrents nowadays but it does take some reading up on how to properly set things up and a bit of knowledge about what type of connection you have to accomplish it.

 

[MysticMiner]

I dunno about that, most torrent software I've tried usually has fairly reasonable defaults. Somebody would have to manually configure things for that to happen. Which unfortunately, can happen, since people don't know what they're selecting half the time, and higher MUST BE BETTER! Or something.

But the problem of how many users do set their upload to zero is a real one. Or at least, it's perceived as one.

Of course, the worst problem is when I need a system CD but nobody seeds it! My poor iPaq! I'll never have that iso!