SBLinux.org

I thought I would start a topic called etiquette, so that beginners could have somewhat of an outline of what to do and what would be good sharing habits.
So I'll start, but since I'm doing this live, I retain the right to edit it.

BitTorrent involves sharing; tit for tat. Your sharing ability, is limited by your upload speed (upstream) which is usually considerably less than your download (downstream) speed, and the percentage of that available bandwidth that you are willing to use to share the file.
Unlike other file sharing types, where you have to have the full file in order to share, with BitTorrent, if you have any of the full pieces of the file, you can start to share those pieces with users who don't have those bits, and you can get bits of the file from them, that you don't have. The piece size is generally 256KB's, but could be 128KB's or even 512 or larger/smaller. In a healthy swarm, the persons with the fastest upload speeds, and who are using that speed, will be favored by the seed or seeders (swarm members with the full file) since they are giving back more pieces faster than some others, thus taking some of the load off of the seeder. So, a good thing to remember is that if you want the file faster, share faster. There is nothing more miserable for a seeder to watch, than to be seeding a file to leechers (swarm members that don't have the complete file) and seeing that they are not sharing between themselves. This effectively turns a seeder into a server, dishing out the complete file to every leecher, which totally defeats the purpose of BitTorrent. Which brings me to the second definition of a leecher: A swarm member who is not sharing. I would advise everyone to open the Tab "Peers" and watch a large swarm in action. It will be a learning experience if you have never done this. All for now, feel free to add, subtract, edit or debate.

Great description, jblu!

Lots of times we see the phrase: "So, a good thing to remember is that if you want the file faster, share faster. " The point is, you didn't just say it again, you explained why it's true.

It's too early in the month to give out any prizes yet, but you're nominated for the SBLinux Fact of the Month prize with that brief but highly informative post.

Thanks!

jblu,silverbear,
New to the bit torrent process,have been seeding jasonoob's version of MEPIS 7 on linuxtracker since Sunday morning,a week ago.I had to shut down today a couple of times,due to severe weather in the area.I will probably have to shut down overnight again due to the forecast.Is it better to stop seeding until I can stay on,or just seed when I can?
Also, I'm using Deluge,and used the wizard to set it up at 384K upload it set me up at 35K up when seeding ,how much higher can I take up?
Thanks in advance for your replies,Wayne.

wcc1776 wrote:jblu,silverbear,
New to the bit torrent process,have been seeding jasonoob's version of MEPIS 7 on linuxtracker since Sunday morning,a week ago.I had to shut down today a couple of times,due to severe weather in the area.I will probably have to shut down overnight again due to the forecast.Is it better to stop seeding until I can stay on,or just seed when I can?
Also, I'm using Deluge,and used the wizard to set it up at 384K upload it set me up at 35K up when seeding ,how much higher can I take up?
Thanks in advance for your replies,Wayne.

Hi, Wayne.
And welcome to SBLinux.org! Glad to have you aboard.

I have severe weather shut-downs myself, living near Lake Erie. I'd say just seed whenever you can. No sense in endangering your equipment. And no need to worry about scheduling large blocks of time, necessarily. You're helping whenever your helping. Right now, we're covered pretty well. Things get more critical when a new release is just out.

We're trying to keep each torrent adequately seeded, which means a few people at a time, whenever they can.

As far as your upload speed, here is the page EVERYONE should use to calculate his settings:
http://infinite-source.de/az/az-calc.html

And the official Azureus website is excellent for info, even if you don't use that BT client. I use Deluge myself, BTW.

SilverBear

Hi Wayne and Welcome! I'm new here too. Silverbear gave you great advice. I would only add that I would never let my seeding interfere with other things I wanted to do on the Internet. Sometimes with a busy torrent and all of the connections to the swarm, it's almost impossible to do anything else - even Web browse.
My ISP has been doing maintenance, and I will be off line from midnight tonight until 6 A.M. I just roll with the punches and do what I can when I can.
I happened to notice someone downloading the AntiX-7.2.iso, this morning - at 350 kB/s! Wow, you don't usually see those kinds of download speeds unless you're in a big new swarm of Fedora Core or Open Suse! At the time there were 15 seeders. Thanks for your help with seeding.
Mepis rules!

Thanks for that ample description, jblu.

I'm just getting my feet wet with the whole Bit Torrent thing, and it's good to have a clue how things really work (or don't).

You are very welcome. I hope I'm helping and not confusing! It's a pleasure to know you.

Silverbear& jblu,
Thanks for the welcomes, been using MEPIS(Linux) for a year and a half now, have quite a few days when I show myself just how much I don't know,but have learned 10x more about computers and how they work than I learned in 6 years using that other OS that wants to do everything for you.
Will continue to help MEPIS by seeding torrents, and any other way that I can. Glad to be here,Wayne.