Queued Seeding, Red Seeding Bar, Number of Connections

[Zoey]

Win 7 64
DSL 160kB down - 70kB up
uTorrent 3.1.3

I have noticed recently that after 48+ hours of running uTorrent many of the torrent status bars turn red. I read online what this means about the trackers not being able to connect. Restarting uTorrent fixed this issue. My question is do I need to be sure none of my status bars are red? I am assuming that red bars cannot seed properly so I need to be sure it is green.

When I restarted my uTorrent client about half of the seeding list status stayed at "queued seed". Will it start uploading and turn active if someone needs the files? What does it mean "active torrents". I had active torrents at 30 because 6 downloading and 10 or so uploading at a single time meant 16 active torrents. Now it appears as though active torrent means anything in the list that is not in a queue even if there is no activity up or down on this torrent. My list is over 100.

I want to seed as many files as possible to keep a good ratio. I have the cheap run of the mill DSL with a 2Wire modem/router. I don't know much about connections or how to tell how many I can have on the router or ISP. Do I have a limit to how many active torrents I can have? I changed it from 30 to 200 in uTorrent. For basic broadband users what is an average number or atleast a guess of how many torrents we can seed?

[ConsiderPhlebas]

I run Azureus so I dodge the utorrent-specific questions, but I'm pretty sure about one thing: The number of simultaneous peer connections is a much more interesting number for your router and network stability than the amount of simultaneously active torrents. I've rather randomly set at most 250 connections globally and at most 30 per torrent (as well as capping DL and UL to numbers a bit lower than the maximum speeds possible), and it's behaving good (I'm at 30/12 Mbit/sec VDSL). If your network isn't working very well, you might want to put in a lower number.

[Freedom Kira]

Red status bar can indicate any error message. You need to learn how to get to the actual tracker status message.

Restarting will usually, but not always, fix the issue.

[Zoey]

I had global connections at 200 and per torrent 100. I'll lower these numbers a bit. Maybe it will help distribute my bandwidth.

The red status indicates "timed out" on my torrents, reconnecting in 3, 2, 1 and still timed out.

[Bozobub]

It's a good idea to set global and per-torrent maximum connections to the same value; if you're only running one torrent, this will let that torrent still use all available connections...

[megido-rev.M]

Too many connections are not necessarily better, however.

[Freedom Kira]

It's a good idea to set global and per-torrent maximum connections to the same value; if you're only running one torrent, this will let that torrent still use all available connections...

That can screw up the queue, actually. If you're running enough torrents and enough of the torrents keep connections alive without any activity, nothing ever gets done.

The more torrents you run, the smaller you should set the per-torrent max.

[megido-rev.M]

^ Precisely. Wouldn't want to bog a computer with hundreds of connections for nothing now.

[Zoey]

Good info everyone, thanks!

Are there suggested settings, file sizes or number of seeds for different connection types/ dedicated PC or no. What file size range is best for your connection? What does BBT prefer/ need?

I am downloading alot of small bonus torrents to help seed them and to collect some points. I tried downloading larger bonus torrents but they take too long on my connection. For new people with slow connections it seemed logical to get the smaller torrents. Should I gradually transition to larger files or just seed whatever I have and not worry about it?

[megido-rev.M]

Just do what you can .

[Bozobub]

That can screw up the queue, actually. If you're running enough torrents and enough of the torrents keep connections alive without any activity, nothing ever gets done.

The more torrents you run, the smaller you should set the per-torrent max.

Not really.

First off, most of the  whitelisted torrent clients are decent at prioritizing connections.  Actively downloading torrents get most - in fact, nearly all - of the available connections, unless you manually specify otherwise.  When I run uTorrent, for example, with many torrents active, the client is pretty good at balancing the number of connections per torrent, within reason.  There IS, of course, some variability.

Second, your computer won't bog under ONE torrent using many connections any more than it will under MANY torrents using the exact same number of connections.  In fact, it will bog (slightly) more when many torrents are active.  The only thing allowing more connections per torrent will do, is let fewer torrents grab more connections per torrent, without you having to constantly change the number of connections per torrent.  In other words, you don't have to micromanage as much.

Try it yourself; empirical observation FTW.  I've observed the same behavior under uTorrent and Azureues/Vuze.

[Freedom Kira]

The default for KTorrent is to not dynamically change torrent priority in the queue. This behavior initially had no problems, but once I went over 300-400 torrents, new torrents I added never even started downloading. BakaBT torrents stalled at 0B downloaded for days on end and never moved until I did something about it.

There's a setting that makes KTorrent shift stuff down the queue when they've been stalled for a long enough time, which is probably what uTorrent and Vuze do by default.

Vuze also has a feature where it does not count connections using less than a certain amount of bandwidth (like 256B/s or something), which is also useful for avoiding such situations. uTorrent might also have something like that. But for the general case, what I've said will hold true. Your client may have mechanisms in place to avoid lockups, but regardless it's not a good idea to allow as many connections per torrent as the client is allowed total if you are running more than, say, 10 torrents at a time.

[Bozobub]

What you should be saying, then, is that you shouldn't do so, IF your torrent client doesn't prioritize connections properly =o .

[Freedom Kira]

Perhaps. But you don't wait until your brakes fail before getting them fixed, right? It's a good idea to just set it that way regardless, sort of as a precaution.

[ConsiderPhlebas]

Vuze also has a feature where it does not count connections using less than a certain amount of bandwidth (like 256B/s or something), which is also useful for avoiding such situations.

This is very useful, but you should make sure to change the actual value to something relevant to your bandwidth.
I've set mine to 5 kB/sec as more realistic for my connection (and not running hundreds of torrents, rather 15-30).