Since the upgrade to 2.8.3 and 2.8.4, where trackers could be adjusted by tiers, the ability to have more than one active tracker seems to be lost. Only the top-most tracker is reported as "Working," where the rest are reported as "Not Contacted Yet." (And I have no idea if it's due to libtorrent-rasterbar or the qBittorrent interface.)
So: If a tracker is moved to the top-most position, no matter what tier it began in, it will generally work (unless that particular tracker is broken). But the previous top-most tracker is then moved down and shows "Not Contacted Yet," despite showing a number of seeds/peers. It also seems to make no difference if a tracker is tiered at the 0 position, 1, 2, etc.
However, this isn't always the case; on occasion, when a different tracker is moved to the top position, the previous top-most tracker will still show as "Working," but this is a rare occurrence. It's inconsistent, but never gets more than two or three trackers, no matter how many are added.
This behavior started with the addition of the tiers and the ability to shift them around (with the arrows on the right side of the Trackers tab). In past versions, where no tiering was present, all trackers that worked showed "Working" and displayed the number of seeds and peers. Now it seems that no matter how many trackers are added, only one will be used.
The thing is, I've compared the stable ppa version against the 11.04 supported version, 2.6.9, and can't really tell the difference. In general, with version 2.6.9, the speed is faster with clearly active multiple trackers. However, version 2.8.4 seems to be only a little slower even though it shows only one clearly working tracker -- but that may just be due to the kind of torrentz I've tested (either low-seeded niche documentaries or really common and massively-torrented programs). So I can't tell if those multiple trackers in 2.8.4 actually aren't being contacted, or if they really are being contacted and qBittorrent incorrectly shows them as "Not Contacted Yet."
In the meantime, I've gone back to 2.6.9 I don't know if this is just a Linux issue or a general issue, but I'm using the stable Launchpad ppa (or was), and saw the issue in Ubuntu 11.04. I'll also file a bug on launchpad, just in case.
Multiple Trackers Aren't Recognized in 2.8.4
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fingaz
Re: Multiple Trackers Aren't Recognized in 2.8.4
I can second this bug, having the same issue on 2.8.4 on Debian Wheezy 64bit.
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mxyzptlk
Re: Multiple Trackers Aren't Recognized in 2.8.4
I submitted a bug at launchpad, and Christopher hydr0g3n wrote back that it's the expected behavior now, in accordance with current multitracker specifications. If qBittorrent doesn't respect those specs, the app will be blacklisted.
Re: Multiple Trackers Aren't Recognized in 2.8.4
Thanks for the link Mxyzptlk!
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mxyzptlk
Re: Multiple Trackers Aren't Recognized in 2.8.4
I know this has already been answered, and the bug report was responded to. But it seems the new behavior defeats the purpose of multitracker torrents.
Unless I'm misunderstanding something, a torrent with multiple trackers in fact is meant to contact multiple trackers. The new default behavior only contacts one out of the available trackers, and ignores the rest unless it's moved to the top position. At least for me, this has slowed my speeds down significantly; on average, torrents will take 2-3 times as long to download as before. (I've been comparing 2.8.4 against 2.6.9.)
If that's the way qbittorrent is meant to work from now on, I'm not sure the way it currently looks is the most intuitive. In the trackers tab, it looks like it should be able to contact all the trackers in the list, but it actually only contacts the top one. Something more intuitive might have the working one in green and the rest gray or something that clearly marks them as back-up trackers, as opposed to trackers that qbittorrent is supposed to contact but is mysteriously failing to.
Overall, it's a significant change that negatively affects performance. I understand that the change is meant to uphold a standard, but it seems download speed really takes the hit. My whole point is the tracker tab interface doesn't reflect this change, and if qbittorrent isn't going to connect to multiple trackers at once, then it shouldn't look like it's possible but something is just failing to work.
Unless I'm misunderstanding something, a torrent with multiple trackers in fact is meant to contact multiple trackers. The new default behavior only contacts one out of the available trackers, and ignores the rest unless it's moved to the top position. At least for me, this has slowed my speeds down significantly; on average, torrents will take 2-3 times as long to download as before. (I've been comparing 2.8.4 against 2.6.9.)
If that's the way qbittorrent is meant to work from now on, I'm not sure the way it currently looks is the most intuitive. In the trackers tab, it looks like it should be able to contact all the trackers in the list, but it actually only contacts the top one. Something more intuitive might have the working one in green and the rest gray or something that clearly marks them as back-up trackers, as opposed to trackers that qbittorrent is supposed to contact but is mysteriously failing to.
Overall, it's a significant change that negatively affects performance. I understand that the change is meant to uphold a standard, but it seems download speed really takes the hit. My whole point is the tracker tab interface doesn't reflect this change, and if qbittorrent isn't going to connect to multiple trackers at once, then it shouldn't look like it's possible but something is just failing to work.
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loki
Re: Multiple Trackers Aren't Recognized in 2.8.4
You are mistaken, torrents with multiple trackers are supposed to be there for redundancy, in case one or more of the trackers are down it will pick one down the list that is working and stick with it.
Re: Multiple Trackers Aren't Recognized in 2.8.4
When a torrent has just say 5 trackers the first one is being used, but sometimes the first tracker hasn't the peers which other trackers do have (I discovered this few days ago, deleting and readding the tracker did fix it and started announcing) after that I had alot more peers which might sound weird but it did work. So deleting the inactive trackers and readding does work and helps sometimes but isn't necesseray. Now it goes with tiers instead announcing all together, most likely only 1 tracker will be used and peer exchange does the job by getting more peers from others so basically you ain't missing anything. But like I said the deleting and readding the tracker did work for me. Can't say that this is a bug cause 99% of the time it all works good.
Last edited by Nemo on Tue Aug 23, 2011 4:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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mxyzptlk
Re: Multiple Trackers Aren't Recognized in 2.8.4
I'm editing a crituque I just left because of a new feature in the 2.9.0 version that was supposed to solve the problem I initially posted.
In qBittorrent 2.9.0, if you go into Tools > Options > Advanced, scroll down to the bottom of options and you'll see the option "Always announce to all trackers." This was supposed to help by bringing back previous functionality where more than one tracker was contacted after a torrent was added.
However, in my experience, whether that feature is checked or not, my download speeds have been miserable -- bytes per second, let alone kilabytes of any sort. The only thing that has changed in my settings -- which are conservative -- is this multitracker functionality and turning off/on that "Always announce to all trackers" feature. This is also the case whether "Enable bandwidth management (uTP)", "Apply rate limit to uTP connections" or "Apply rate limit to transport overhead" were checked or not. In any case, qBittorrent has become a slug.
I've tried the latest versions of every release, and until Ubuntu 11.10, always ended up back back at a 2.6 version. With the post-2.8 versions, torrents that would take at best an hour were taking many, many hours, or even show that a download would take days. This is also the case in 2.9, whether qBittorrent is announcing to all trackers or not. However, the same torrents in Transmission will take between minutes to a couple of hours, just like qBittorrent used to.
So to reiterate, since the change in the way multiple trackers were handled in the 2.8 versions, qBittorrent's reliable functionality has disappeared. In my case, I can't really go back to the 2.6 versions, and I can't really see having re-add trackers for every torrent (as suggested), nor having to wait 28 days for something another client will bring down in an hour or two. The client shouldn't be getting in the user's way.
I'm willing to try some fixes, but only if those fixes will make it as functional as the 2.6 version. Otherwise an rss reader and Transmission will have to take qBittorrent's place, and that makes me a sad mxyzptlk.
Also, loki says I was mistaken about the purpose of multiple trackers, which raises some questions:
First, why call them multiple trackers if they're actually just back-up trackers and only one tracker is being used? That's inaccurate at best, if not misleading. Does this mean that even though 2.6 showed being connected to multiple trackers it was actually only connected to one tracker? And since 2.9 introduced "Always announce to all trackers" it's still only using one tracker? Because that's what it sounds like, and it's confusing as hell. It sounds like multiple trackers serves the same function as a crosswalk button (which in the U.S. does nothing).
Second, after the new way of managing supposedly redundant-but-unused trackers was implemented into 2.8, why did the download speeds slow down so drastically? There just seems to be a correlation between only connecting to one tracker -- even if that's apparently what actually happened in the past but it didn't look that way -- and the ridiculously slow speeds now.
Don't get me wrong, I really like this application and have submitted bugs and tested in the past. But it just feels broken now.
In qBittorrent 2.9.0, if you go into Tools > Options > Advanced, scroll down to the bottom of options and you'll see the option "Always announce to all trackers." This was supposed to help by bringing back previous functionality where more than one tracker was contacted after a torrent was added.
However, in my experience, whether that feature is checked or not, my download speeds have been miserable -- bytes per second, let alone kilabytes of any sort. The only thing that has changed in my settings -- which are conservative -- is this multitracker functionality and turning off/on that "Always announce to all trackers" feature. This is also the case whether "Enable bandwidth management (uTP)", "Apply rate limit to uTP connections" or "Apply rate limit to transport overhead" were checked or not. In any case, qBittorrent has become a slug.
I've tried the latest versions of every release, and until Ubuntu 11.10, always ended up back back at a 2.6 version. With the post-2.8 versions, torrents that would take at best an hour were taking many, many hours, or even show that a download would take days. This is also the case in 2.9, whether qBittorrent is announcing to all trackers or not. However, the same torrents in Transmission will take between minutes to a couple of hours, just like qBittorrent used to.
So to reiterate, since the change in the way multiple trackers were handled in the 2.8 versions, qBittorrent's reliable functionality has disappeared. In my case, I can't really go back to the 2.6 versions, and I can't really see having re-add trackers for every torrent (as suggested), nor having to wait 28 days for something another client will bring down in an hour or two. The client shouldn't be getting in the user's way.
I'm willing to try some fixes, but only if those fixes will make it as functional as the 2.6 version. Otherwise an rss reader and Transmission will have to take qBittorrent's place, and that makes me a sad mxyzptlk.
Also, loki says I was mistaken about the purpose of multiple trackers, which raises some questions:
First, why call them multiple trackers if they're actually just back-up trackers and only one tracker is being used? That's inaccurate at best, if not misleading. Does this mean that even though 2.6 showed being connected to multiple trackers it was actually only connected to one tracker? And since 2.9 introduced "Always announce to all trackers" it's still only using one tracker? Because that's what it sounds like, and it's confusing as hell. It sounds like multiple trackers serves the same function as a crosswalk button (which in the U.S. does nothing).
Second, after the new way of managing supposedly redundant-but-unused trackers was implemented into 2.8, why did the download speeds slow down so drastically? There just seems to be a correlation between only connecting to one tracker -- even if that's apparently what actually happened in the past but it didn't look that way -- and the ridiculously slow speeds now.
Don't get me wrong, I really like this application and have submitted bugs and tested in the past. But it just feels broken now.