Lotsa peers, no seeds = very slow download

[GregR1]

i'm currently using 0.5.6.96 under ubuntu 7.10, and i'm noticing that a torrent won't bother downloading if there are no seeders even if there is a handful (4 to 20) peers, and the peers have a higher % of file downloaded than i do (example - i just started downloading, so i'm at 1% or so, but peers have 20% to 80%)

are there settings that i should enable or disable to allow deluge to grab file chunks from peers rather than just sitting around with doing nothing until a seeder comes online? seems messed up and totally against the concept of P2P file exchange if my install doesn't exchange with another P.

also, sometimes even with 1 seed and 2-5 peers, it'll download exceedingly slowly, like no more than 5kB/s.

[markybob]

i'm currently using 0.5.6.96 under ubuntu 7.10, and i'm noticing that a torrent won't bother downloading if there are no seeders even if there is a handful (4 to 20) peers, and the peers have a higher % of file downloaded than i do (example - i just started downloading, so i'm at 1% or so, but peers have 20% to 80%)

are there settings that i should enable or disable to allow deluge to grab file chunks from peers rather than just sitting around with doing nothing until a seeder comes online? seems messed up and totally against the concept of P2P file exchange if my install doesn't exchange with another P.

also, sometimes even with 1 seed and 2-5 peers, it'll download exceedingly slowly, like no more than 5kB/s.

it's not up to you. you get put in those peer's queues, and when your turn comes up, then they'll start sending you pieces. not to mention that 2-5 peers is very little. and you should upgrade

[GregR1]

it's not up to you. you get put in those peer's queues, and when your turn comes up, then they'll start sending you pieces. not to mention that 2-5 peers is very little. and you should upgrade

ah, ok, that makes sense. i vaguely remember something along those lines from when i used clients back in the days of kazaa and morpheus and others. good to know it's not a setting that i buggered up! yeah, for some torrents, 5 peers is all i get - though usually it's much healthier than that. it still threw me for a loop when i had 5 peers, 2 of which had 100% available, and none of which was willing to give up the goods. reminded me of women.

incidentally, is there a tutorial somewhere that explains what UPnP / NAT-PMP / Peer Exchange and all that other stuff is used for, and what turning each of them on or off actually does? the tooltips are... um... laughable. the tooltip for the Peer Exchange tickbox says "Peer Exchange".

[johnnyg]

incidentally, is there a tutorial somewhere that explains what UPnP / NAT-PMP / Peer Exchange and all that other stuff is used for, and what turning each of them on or off actually does? the tooltips are... um... laughable. the tooltip for the Peer Exchange tickbox says "Peer Exchange".

you can start by reading their respective wikipedia articles: UPnP, NAT-PMP, Peer Exchange.

AFAIK, you only need to enable UPnP or NAT-PMP if you're behind a router (or any NAT firewall) and you haven't manually configured port forwarding.

Peer exchange allows you to connect to other local peers without using a tracker (currently only compatible with utorrent's implementation) so you should only disable it if it's causing problems.