A quick ratio question

[KasK18]

Hey guys, so I've been having an "issue" lately where the ratio that's being reported by the site doesn't match up with the ratio I have in uTorrent. I always assumed that this has something to do with the delay in the tracker updating to the site, but the weird thing is, the other three torrents I have are all reporting the same ratio between the site and uTorrent. Anyone know what might be causing this? Or is this just a "glitch", for lack of a better word, that's standard fair?

[Freedom Kira]

Are you saying that you have four BBT torrents going, and three of them have correct ratios while the fourth doesn't? Did you perhaps have some ratio on the unmatching one before you added it?

[KasK18]

Herp I cant count; I'm saying I have 6 total BBT torrents going at once, 4 of them are showing correct ratios between the site and uTorrent, two of them (it so happens they're two seasons of the same anime) are showing incorrect ratio values, with the site being lower than uTorrent. And no, I don't believe that I did as I downloaded both torrents while logged on to my account. Is it possible that my upload speed is seriously outpacing what the tracker can update?

[Sashamaru]

Tracker stats are not updated in real-time. It may take 30 minutes to a few hours or more depending on circumstances.

More info here.

[KasK18]

Ah, ok I see. Well that just leaves one question on my end. See, I've already seeded both torrents past the 2.5 mark and I want to stop them so I can download a different torrent. Rule of thumb for me is no more than 6 torrents simultaneously and no less than a 2.5 seed ratio. Anyway, my question is that, if I stop them now, would the tracker eventually update to the final ratio of the stopped torrent or would it just keep the ratio that it last updated from, before the stop? Also, is there any way to check if my tracker is working properly and is there anything I can do themake sure the tracker works?

Thanks for the help btw 

[Sashamaru]

If your torrent is stopped and your stats for it don't update within 24 hours, then they probably won't without you starting it again.

Packets being sent from your client to the BakaBT tracker may be getting dropped by your ISP for one reason or another. If you're connecting through a large shared network such as a university, your packets may be handled incorrectly as well. In either case, there's nothing we can do about it on our end.

The tracker is working properly and is quite accurate. As for your torrent client, you could try connecting on a different port.

[Freedom Kira]

I believe that if you stop a torrent, the site is updated immediately. I've never had anything take longer than a few seconds to move from active to inactive after stopping it. Intuitively, the tracker should be updated at that point when the stop signal was sent, but there's always a chance that the protocol doesn't allow a final update while you're stopping a torrent.

[Al_Sleeper]

If the discrepancy is less than 10%, don't sweat about it because it's pretty normal due to network hiccups etc.

[Freedom Kira]

It would be normal if all of his torrents experienced the same discrepancy. That only a certain few torrents experience it is odd.

[KasK18]

Kira: I mean, when I do stop it does move from Active to Inactive with very little delay (no more than 10-15 seconds usually). However the ratio does not update (though conceptually I agree that it should).

Sleeper: Actually, the discrepancy is larger than 10%. Not by much, it is around 11% - 12%; dont know if that tells you anything.

Sashamaru: I have no doubts the tracker itself is accurate, in fact all the other torrents I've ever downloaded had the same values between site and client (used to think it was real-time, then I read the Wiki =p). How would I go about connecting on a different port?

For general info's sake: running uTorrent 3.2 (build 27886), internet is by Verizon in Maryland, USA; UL speeds (as tested on speedtest.net) is around 25 MB/s and DL is around 28 MB/s. I have no issue uploading at greater than 150 kB/s per torrent when demands gets high and I generally DL at around 3.2 MB/s. Also, connected via WiFi, not hardline (too far away from my AP to run a cat 6 wire =p). Current port used for incoming connections is 48943. If there's anything else that you need to know, let me know.

[Al_Sleeper]

Actually, the discrepancy is larger than 10%. Not by much, it is around 11% - 12%; dont know if that tells you anything.

It's still pretty normal, especially for smaller torrents. No need to worry unless it gets more than 25-50%.

[datora]

.
*bampu*

This topic comes up every now and again.  I'm gonna weigh in on it because I notice another topic just started with similar concern, and I have an example where I'm missing over 11 GB of upload.

I've seen this before, I don't know why.  It is real, although (usually) fairly minor.  Usually I see that my utorrent (v 2.0.4 on WinXP almost always these last ~three years) uploads more than my tracker profile reports.  It is not consistent, either.  Some torrents track right down to the ~0.010 decimal place and I haven't run across any signs to let me predict.

Until recently, I figure it's just normal "noise" in the network.  I run torrents for fairly extended periods of time, usually targeting a ratio of ~15:1 or up to ~20:1 for larger torrents (over ~5-7 GB).  So, they may run for four or five months or longer, and may get deleted & reseeded in sessions a year apart, etc.

Anyway.  Nurarihyon no Mago: Sennen Makyou [720p] [tlacatlc6] is one I reseeded from a D/L from Nyaa, except for a minor 336 MB of the extras which I had to download from here to complete the torrent as offered @BBT.

Looking at the absolute ratio on my tracker profile, I have uploaded 199 GB which gives 17.389:1 ratio (rounded to 17.4).  However, my utorrent client records an upload of 210 GB with a reported ratio of 18.381.  It's a full 1:1 hit to the ratio on that torrent over 756 H 2 min, according to the tracker.  I consider under 1000 hours to be a fairly short seed time, BTW.

I mean, like I care personally.     My ratio is absurd, so I'm not affected.  But, I can see how that might affect other people with slower connections and less OCD dedication to their seeding.  Loss of 11 GB is a bit excessive for mere "noise" in the network.  And, it's bleeding proportionally as time goes on.  I didn't lose it all in the initial seed swarm.  As time progresses, I see the ratio difference slowly increasing.  Been watching it for a few weeks now, and utorrent also reports zero hash fails for zero wasted transfer in the statistics.


Other torrents, like I say, are all currently within much closer margins.

For example, this is far more typical of what I see when there is a discrepancy: Lone Wolf and Cub | Kozure Ookami.  Here's one I've been seeding for half a year, both because it's below my ratio goal and because it has few seeders, so I'm trying to help keep it up with a healthy seedpool.

On my tracker profile it shows 125.17 GB upload for an absolute ratio of 14.256 (rounded to 14.3 in the tracker, and a 'relative' green ratio of 14.262).  On my utorrent client, it shows an upload of 126 GB for a ratio of 14.398.  This is almost exactly typical for torrents that I seed for extended periods (4359 hours at this moment) to higher ratios.  A total of 3 hash fails for 12.1 MB in all that time.

THAT is what I consider loss to "noise" in the Internet.

Occasionally, BTW, I see it in the other direction, too.  Sometimes my ratio on the tracker is slightly higher than the ratio reported by my client, although that has always been very minor ... never an issue of several extra gigabytes.


I don't have any handy other examples, but it has seemed to me that in the last year I have noticed a bit more loss in seed credit than I did in the first year and a half that I was here.  Also, I do a fair bit of reseeding, which makes it much more difficult to directly observe these discrepancies.

As said, I'm just posting this for further information.  It affects me not at all.  But, I will support the reports that sometimes there is the odd torrent that drops a few GB of seeding ratio.  It's more easy to observe on larger torrents that run over an extended time period, especially to higher ratios.  When I've noticed it, it also seems that a particular torrent will act this way while others don't, and the loss is proportional over time rather than one or a few specific events.  Tracking with BBT, I rarely ever see hash fails, BTW.  one of the beauties of a private tracker that only allows its own server to be included in a *.torrent file.

Overall, I've found the tracker to highly accurate, probably within 0.1% or better nearly always.  But I have seen a few odd burps in the system over time and over 1000 torrents.  The other comments posted here are all valid as far as I've observed.  I find that adding a torrent to my client shows up nearly instantly in my tracker profile, like within 30 seconds.  However, when I Pause or Stop a torrent, it often takes 15 or 30 minutes for it to go Inactive on my profile.  I consider that normal behavior for any tracker I've used; it should wait a while before making a torrent inactive just to compensate for normal network noise.

Also, if there's an abrupt & 'catastrophic' termination of the torrent ... such as power loss to the computer or the hosting service getting cut off suddenly ... the torrenting client doesn't get a chance to send a 'Stop' signal, so a torrent on your tracker profile may appear to be active for two or three days.  I've seen that when I've been caught in a blackout a few times now.

[KasK18]

I too have torrents that I've been uploading for close to a year now, actually 3 of the 6 I have right now are torrents that have never left my client since downloading. I will say that I have noticed the "inaccuracy over time issue" as well, but not nearly as pronounced. My own personal ratio is quite high so I'm not really worried about it dipping any time soon either but I'm slightly OCD and it bothered me when the numbers didnt match up. If there's nothing we can do about it, I'm cool with that but I just wanted to bring it to the attention of the staff, just in case this is a serious issue =]

For my part, I'll just keep seeding away; in the end what matters is that I seed and people use it....the ratio is just a bonus visual representation.

[buchno]

When the tracker is down for backup each night, you upload during that downtime and then close the client before the tracker is up again so that the client can't tell the tracker how much it has uploaded, what happens?

[megido-rev.M]

BTW I noticed that backup happens around 10-11pm ET and around 1-3am ET (can't quite remember precisely).

[Southrop]

BTW I noticed that backup happens around 10-11pm ET and around 1-3am ET (can't quite remember precisely).

Starts at 2am GMT. Lasts approximately 10 to 30 minutes.

edit:
it seems to be 2:47-ish actually.

[Bozobub]

One thing that *may* be relevant is that it matters how you stop a torrent and/or your client.  If you stop a torrent within your client and/or you terminate your client using its built-in "Exit" command, then it will gracefully end the torrent(s) and report proper stats to the tracker.  If not (say, the client crashes, you end it in Task Manager, you "force"-shutdown (either by holding in the power button or by telling WIndows to kill all programs now on shutdown), then your stats do not get sent in to the tracker properly.  Any ratio changes for that period of time - at least from the last tracker ratio update; it depends on the tracker - will be lost.

If you always shut down gracefully, I got nothin' for ya ...

[KasK18]

That's the thing though, I never shut down my computer (unless there's a power outage of course)....I do, however, put it to sleep (actually I've stopped doing that as well now). Whenever I exit the client, I always use the built in "exit function.