How do I improve my ratio?

[TeeJayHoward]

There's too many seeders!

I know, I know... "What a problem to have", huh? It's nice initially, when you're downloading at near your internet connection's max speed... But then the series finishes, and nobody's uploading from you.

I've had 4 series seeding 24 hours a day for about a week now. Upstream capped at 40KB/s per torrent. During that time, I've uploaded maybe 5GB of data - Nowhere near enough to balance out my ratio. And unfortunately, with a ratio of 0.335, I can't download any other anime from boxtorrents. At the rate I'm going, I won't be able to grab another series for two months!

I assume I'm doing something wrong. What's the secret? How do you improve your ratio aside from seeding the anime you have?

[psyren]

Read about our bonus system. That should help.

[TeeJayHoward]

Read about our bonus system. That should help.

"You get 1 bonus point per hour (max 10 bonus points per hour) for each torrent you're uploading that is marked as a bonus torrent."

I'm a little over 30GB away from 1:1. That's 9600 hours if 1 of my series is marked for bonus. Best case scenario, all 4 are. That's 2400 hours of seeding, or 100 days of seeding 24/7. It costs me around $10/month to have this machine on 24/7.

If I have to wait 3 months to download a single series, that's $30 - I may as well just go buy a licensed series on DVD instead of seeding.

[psyren]

... or you might as well donate and have your upload stats boosted as a bonus.

[defsyfe]

You've been a member for seventeen days and you've downloaded 51 gigs.... Adding those four torrents you're seeding together doesn't add up to 51. Why don't you uncork gundam seed and let it seed more. You don't need to cap individual torrents. That's just silly. If there's 53 seeds and 1 peer you don't allocate 40kb's to it... More than likely that peer wont even connect to you. >.>

[kureshii]

In summary:

1) Upload to less-seeded torrents
2) Seed torrents flagged as bonus, use points to exchange for upload.
3) Donate $$$
4) Download less or more slowly, or download from a public tracker

[nstgc]

Assuming you aren't warned (that you can still download). Download a few pieces from a torrent with few seeds, then stop downloading. Cap that download so that it doesn't download at all. It doesn't matter what, just that its peer-seed ratio is high. You don't need a complete torrent or even file to seed, but one full piece.

[TeeJayHoward]

You've been a member for seventeen days and you've downloaded 51 gigs....

I downloaded some stuffs to a friend's machine over the weekend. Don't have the files to share. Had I of realized that the lack of leechers was going to be this big of a problem, I would have waited until I got home, and seeded those as well.

Why don't you uncork gundam seed and let it seed more.

With 0 leechers connected, the cap is irrelevant. My upstream is capped around 50KB/s anyway. "Uncorking" Gundam 00 wouldn't help much.

You don't need to cap individual torrents. That's just silly.

I concur. However, with btdownloadcurses, there's no way to place a cap over multiple torrents. And, to the best of my knowledge, uTorrent, Azureus, and all the other clients don't have a console/text-only/etc mode.

If there's 53 seeds and 1 peer you don't allocate 40kb's to it... More than likely that peer wont even connect to you. >.>

I agree wholeheartedly. This is really what my gripe/complaint/whining/etc is all about. I'm willing to share, but with the system currently in place, my willingness to share isn't rewarded (as much as I feel it should be). 

3) Donate $$$

I'm not against the idea of donating to a site or organization which shares my beliefs. However, the advantages of being a donor are not [at this point in time] worth the funds requested, in my opinion.

4) Download less or more slowly, or download from a public tracker

I don't believe "Avoid us when you can" is the best philosophy for a web site to have, but in the future, I will try to use boxtorrents as a last resort, instead of the first place I check. As for downloading less/more slowly, I'd rather not impose additional restrictions on myself if I don't have to. It already takes me longer to download a 13 episode series than it does to watch it.

Please don't take this post in a negative manner. Boxtorrents is a wonderful site, and one that I still recommend to my friends for those hard-to-find shows. I believe that the ratio concept works to a degree - I never have problems finding an active torrent. I just believe the system needs a bit of tweaking. (Unfortunately, I have no ideas as to how to tweak it!)

[kureshii]

I don't believe "Avoid us when you can" is the best philosophy for a web site to have, but in the future, I will try to use boxtorrents as a last resort, instead of the first place I check.

I prefer to think of it as "Use us only if you really need to"

Some of the public trackers with Japanese/Korean peers are much faster than trackers here; one peer alone may be able to give me 200kBps (which is a lot considering my down cap is 350-400kBps). I'm here mainly because torrents are well-supported and the bonus points system gives an incentive for people to seed old torrents I may suddenly want. Box is my last resort for rare/unseeded anime.

I have crappy up (35kBps) so I only seed my public downloads up to ratio 1.0, here I'll seed them much more if there are enough peers, because I know most people would reciprocate. But in any case, if I need to download from a well-seeded torrent I know I might not be able to get a >1.0 ratio from I'll either get it completely from a public tracker, or from a mix of both (Box + DHT + PEX).

I made a suggestion on another thread for a system that might help alleviate the problem of well-seeded torrents with few peers (as odd as that sounds), hopefully something to that effect can be implemented.

[defsyfe]

With 0 leechers connected, the cap is irrelevant. My upstream is capped around 50KB/s anyway. "Uncorking" Gundam 00 wouldn't help much.

See that tells me something is wrong. There's more than enough leachers on that torrent I should know i've been uploading on it on and off for about five weeks now. In fact I just connected to it right now and I have five peers connected already. Perhaps you're not allowing enough connections. I really don't know... but if you really want to get your ratio up try tokotosho find a series you want to see download it and come back and help your ratio again. A more popular series this time.

[TeeJayHoward]

There's more than enough leachers on that torrent I should know i've been uploading on it on and off for about five weeks now. In fact I just connected to it right now and I have five peers connected already.

 --------------------------------------------------------------------------
| file:     Gundam 00 [Conclave-Mendoi] (HD_h264)                          |
| size:     8,804,941,550 (8.2  G)                                         |
| dest:     /home/shift/Gundam 00 [Conclave-Mendoi] (HD_h264)              |
| progress: ############################################################## |
| status:   download succeeded!                                            |
| speed:      0    B/s down -   0    B/s up                                |
| totals:     0.0  M   down -   5.0  G   up                                |
| error(s): [15:31:35] Problem connecting to tracker - <urlopen error (111 |
|                                                                          |
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Error's from when the tracker died the other day. But as you can see, nobody's uploading from me. Default number of connections are allowed.

*sigh* If I HAVE to, I'll download Naruto/Bleach/One Piece/DBZ/whatever-other-999-episode-series-people-are-following from a public tracker and share it out here. I'm trying to avoid filling my disk with crap, though 

If other people really aren't having a problem finding leechers, then the problem's got to be on my end. I wonder if it's Comcast trying to screw me over again?

[fuddle36767]

@ 40kBytes/sec upload, if you dedicate all your upload bandwidth 24/7 to Boxtorrents, you should be able to get at least 3GB a day.  If you owe 30GB, that's 10 days, or a week and a half.  That's not so bad...

Maybe your ports are not forwarded properly, or you're using a restricted port, so peers aren't connecting to you.  Personally, I've never had any problems using UPnP, which makes port forwarding unnecessary.

[TeeJayHoward]

@ 40kBytes/sec upload, if you dedicate all your upload bandwidth 24/7 to Boxtorrents, you should be able to get at least 3GB a day.  If you owe 30GB, that's 10 days, or a week and a half.  That's not so bad...

I agree - That's about what I expected to wait. Doesn't seem to be happening, though... 

Maybe your ports are not forwarded properly, or you're using a restricted port, so peers aren't connecting to you.  Personally, I've never had any problems using UPnP, which makes port forwarding unnecessary.

Ports aren't forwarded - They're wide open. The machine I use for torrents is sitting in the demilitarized zone. The more I look at it, the more I think it's that whole "Sandvine" thing. Boxtorrents doesn't support https torrenting, so I can't use encryption to get around it. (And Azureus 3.whatever doesn't work properly under linux anyway)

I might try to call and upgrade my service to a business connection. Apparently they don't use that particular method of traffic shaping on it. And it'd be nice to double my upstream

[defsyfe]

Oh yeah it's nice. I have that one. Got 250 kb/s here in chicago since they upgraded our service about a month ago. I have noticed though that I have problems with azureus and connecting to peers and seeding unless I use Level Five encryption. Utorrent yields no problems though. Also, bleach and naruto aren't up here I believe cause of DB not being allowed. Although the lunar/AonE versions might be up but can't remember who licensed the series........

Anyways just browse around a bit some older shows get a lot of peers and usually always have peers.

PS, right now Geo Armor Kishin Corps torrent is red hott.

[PowerMac]

If other people really aren't having a problem finding leechers, then the problem's got to be on my end. I wonder if it's Comcast trying to screw me over again?

Comcast is known to actively interfere with BitTorrent Seeding.  Id say thats your whole problem right there.

(And Azureus 3.whatever doesn't work properly under linux anyway)

Really? I have Azureus 3 running on a Ubuntu 8.04 box just fine.

[TeeJayHoward]

(And Azureus 3.whatever doesn't work properly under linux anyway)

Really? I have Azureus 3 running on a Ubuntu 8.04 box just fine.

On mine (7.10) Azureus will crash while loading unless it's run as root. In addition, it'll crash the moment you try to start a download even if it's run as root. I suspect the problem to be related to the Java VM that I'm running (Ubuntu's default of IcedTea). Honestly, I've not looked too far into it.


Edit: Yup. Sure enough, "sudo apt-get remove icedtea-java7-bin;sudo apt-get install sun-java5-bin" fixed the problem.

[PowerMac]

(And Azureus 3.whatever doesn't work properly under linux anyway)

Really? I have Azureus 3 running on a Ubuntu 8.04 box just fine.

On mine (7.10) Azureus will crash while loading unless it's run as root. In addition, it'll crash the moment you try to start a download even if it's run as root. I suspect the problem to be related to the Java VM that I'm running (Ubuntu's default of IcedTea). Honestly, I've not looked too far into it.


Edit: Yup. Sure enough, "sudo apt-get remove icedtea-java7-bin;sudo apt-get install sun-java5-bin" fixed the problem.

Glad to hear you fixed it.

[toma]

a seedbox is another solution though I am glad you seem to have fixed it without the need.

[Frendh]

I concur. However, with btdownloadcurses, there's no way to place a cap over multiple torrents. And, to the best of my knowledge, uTorrent, Azureus, and all the other clients don't have a console/text-only/etc mode.

Have you considered running more than one bt client? Then you can put all the torrents you want
to have a shared cap in one client, then set global cap. Lets say you want a cap for all boxtorrents
torrents, then you use µtorrent for boxtorrents torrents only and set the global to whatever you
want it to be.

[TeeJayHoward]

Have you considered running more than one bt client? Then you can put all the torrents you want
to have a shared cap in one client, then set global cap. Lets say you want a cap for all boxtorrents
torrents, then you use µtorrent for boxtorrents torrents only and set the global to whatever you
want it to be.

[...]to the best of my knowledge, uTorrent [...] don't have a console/text-only/etc mode.

This is very important to me, as I very seldom work inside of X.