How to upload only to several peers with 'highest progress'

[vane171]

Hi, new here and also while I used qbittorrent for some years, I actually don't quite understand the settings. Maybe what I want can't be achieved or is a mistaken approach.
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There is a hundred peers with everybody stalled on 30% because nobody has more of the file. All leaching and seeds may be gone or just not online.

I downloaded the whole file over http and I want to seed in some efficient way but my upload is scattered over multitudes of peers, even those who just joined at zero %

I would like to upload only to few of those on those 30% to pull them faster to 100% and then they can join me in seeding much faster.

I played with the setting and was lowering the numbers but still I waste my upload on one or two new peers on 0%


global max connections 100
max # connections per torrent 6
global max # upload slots 6
max # of upload slots per torrent 6

I cut it down drastically and I don't quite get what is a 'slot' here, all I see is that I can't bump of those who just joined the torrent and who slow everybody down.
Even at these low numbers I think even the peers who have most of the files might be switching for others who don't have as much. Is this pure socialism or what?

Is maybe my logic faulty, that of first topping up only several peers to 100% (because I can do it faster) and then open it up again to let my upload be diluted among the multitude, even among the late stragglers? Of course it relies on those who when they get to 100% they will stay to seed alongside myself.

[Peter]

What you want is "Super seeding mode". It uploads to the first peer with max speed. Most client knows this, even old uTorrent versions.

Downside? Well, if the highest peer disappears and/or they don't upload while downloading, you are back to square 1.
But I used this a lot when I uploaded torrents (IN MINECRAFT, FBI), and it worked like a treat.

[vane171]

Thank you, I completely missed that 'Super seeding mode' context menu choice.

Although like with most torrent settings, I am not sure what 'uploads to the first peer with max speed' really means (maybe I am overthinking it) but I guess it is generally what I asked in the OP is what the idea of super seeding is about. There is likely only so much that the torrent client can be made to do, or maybe some such setting was deemed undesirable tool to put into folks' hands.

I used to have gigabyte fiber internet that was symmetric up/down and then it would make sense to super seed to similar peer(s) who can download that fast and join me in seeding (now I am on a relatively pokey cable internet), but as you pointed out the risk, ...if they disappear...

Anyway I will reset my settings back to more normal values now while continuing to super seed (the second image shows 14 seeds on that more relaxed setting), because it looks like I topped up several seeds and things have started moving. Few are now also at 80-90% and it may be best not to fill them fast to 100% if they should vanish, at least they will upload more before they might do so (again as you said, if they upload while downloading).

From the past I know the feeling when I along with a whole bunch of people gets stalled on a torrent that never gets completed and here I was able to use an alternate way to get the 100GB+ file by a conventional download and it got me into a situation I was never in before

[bob2306]

I would like to upload only to few of those on those 30% to pull them faster to 100% and then they can join me in seeding much faster.

FWIW creating seeds is counterproductive compared with creating distributed full copies. There's no reason to think a seed is going to upload any faster than an incomplete peer, quite the opposite actually, since most clients prioritize downloading torrents. There's also a risk that many of the new seeds will, for various reasons, disconnect on completing.

libtorrent supports two version of superseeding. I don't know the details of the default version, but the strict mode (in advanced settings) is presumably the original bittorrent version. In this mode only parts that don't exist in the swarm are uploaded; each peer is offered only one part, and wont get another until that part is reported by a different peer. This is very efficient in terms of bandwidth, but people with fast uploads, doing initial seeding, found it slower than ordinary seeding because it was harder to reach full line speed - so most implementations created a relaxed version. With a modest upload speed it may be worth a try in the future.

Uploading to a single peer may work well most of the time because of the huge range of upload speeds around these days. I would hope libtorrent doesn't stick with that if the peer is not getting the pieces out as fast as it receives them.