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I understand the terms seed and peers in context to bittorrent but while downloading a file what does 1(2) may be for seeds and 1(4) for peer represent ? What does it mean ?

The following pic shows this :

enter image description here

what does that mean ?

Also what does the download speed of torrent depend upon ? I want to know the ratio. i.e what should be the ratio of seeds and peers so that the download speed is max. ?

When will I get a better download speed : ?

  • 2000 seeds + 5000 peers

  • 2000 seeds + 2000 peers

  • 5000 seeds + 2000 peers

Let me verify, a seed is the one that has 100% of the file and peer is the one that is both downloading and uploading the file.

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No, because your download speed is defined by the combined upload speed of all seeds (and some peers). The amount of seeds and peers is irrelevant. You can have 1 seed with 10Gb hookup or 1000 seeds on dialup, the number alone doesn't help you. –  Oliver Salzburg Aug 5 '12 at 17:15
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2 Answers

up vote 1 down vote accepted

"1 (2) seeds" means that you are connected to 1 out of 2 available seeds. Thus, "1 (4) peers" means you are connected to 1 out of 4 available peers.

There really isn't any "optimal" ratio of seeds/peers. You could max out your download bandwidth from one single seed, regardless of how many peers or leechers there are. In general, the more seeds, the better, as this gives you more places to connect to to download the file. So, yes, a torrent with 100 seeds may be slower than a torrent with 1000 seeds. It really depends on the upload speed of the seeds themselves.

A number of reasons could prevent you from connecting to all available seeds. Note that the numbers in parenthesis are the total number of seeds and peers as reported by the tracker, which may not be correct. Some of these seeds may not have their torrent clients open at the moment, or may have reached their maximum amount of connections, so that they are not able to connect to you.

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what could be the reason I am unable to connect to the second seed / in the same manner to all the 4 peers ? –  Suhail Gupta Aug 5 '12 at 17:05
and what I meant to ask was , will 500 peers and 2000 seeders give me a better speed or 2000 peers and 2000 seeders ? –  Suhail Gupta Aug 5 '12 at 17:07
@SuhailGupta Added some more details to the post. Hope it helps. –  Huskehn Aug 5 '12 at 17:13
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5000 seeds 2000 peers = more speed

seeds to peer ratio is more, the better speed you get :D

I hope that helped helped.. :)

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