2 Questions about torrent behaviors that are puzzling
Posted: Mon Jan 27, 2025 10:01 pm
I will use MBps (not Mbps) in references to speeds. And while the questions are generic, I run a Windows 11 Desktop PC. My VPN will support torrent speeds of up to 58 MBps down if the torrent has enough fast seeders (observed in qbittorrent). The most common torrent download speeds are 1-12 MBps. My ISP speed (without VPN) is around 70 MBps (560 Mbps) using speedtest.net. The things I download are mostly tv shows, movies, and music. I thought perhaps the VPN was doing something with speeds, but since they upgraded their up and down speeds around 2 years ago, they are consistently fast all the time and their server capacity is rarely above 30% and is not higher than 25% on the servers I normally use.
Question 1: With a completed torrent download and qbittorrent showing, 20 or more leechers and 10 or more seeders, I often (more than 50% of the time) get no seeding (0 MBps) of the completed torrent. This surprises me when I have all the torrent data, leechers are looking for the rest of the torrent, but none of them connect to me. Is there an explanation for this behavior? My max (observed) upload speed for seeding is around 1.5 MBps. I had one 2 days ago with 60 leechers and nobody was seeding from me even though I had the entire torrent. Any insights about how/why this happens?
Question 2: With some regularity (10% to 20% of the time maybe), I get torrents where I am connected to 10 or more seeders (of perhaps 30 or 40 total seeders), and torrent speeds vary wildly and constantly... from 0 MBps to 10 MBps with many speeds in between. There is no pattern. If speed drops to 0 MBps, it doesn't stay there very long before it is back to 1 MBps or faster, though there are times when the torrent will stay in the XXX KBps range for 10 minutes or more at a time before going faster or slower for some period of time. I have had as many as 3 torrents behaving like that at the same time. And if I add a 4th torrent with a lot of seeders, it can be screaming fast and consistently fast, or slower (XXX KBps range) and stay consistently slow (usually with few seeders available). So the 4th torrent acts "normal" in terms of speed (speeds change, but not in wild swings) while 1 to 3 other torrrents are constantly all over the place in terms of speeds. Initially I thought my ISP was throttling torrents in spite of my using a VPN, but those fast torrents happening at the same time as 1 to 3 constantly wandering speeds of simultaneous torrents pretty much rules out ISP throttling. I think?
Related question: Can torrents show fake numbers of seeders and leechers in qbittorrent? (i.e. show 30 to 50 leechers when there really are none?)
Question 1: With a completed torrent download and qbittorrent showing, 20 or more leechers and 10 or more seeders, I often (more than 50% of the time) get no seeding (0 MBps) of the completed torrent. This surprises me when I have all the torrent data, leechers are looking for the rest of the torrent, but none of them connect to me. Is there an explanation for this behavior? My max (observed) upload speed for seeding is around 1.5 MBps. I had one 2 days ago with 60 leechers and nobody was seeding from me even though I had the entire torrent. Any insights about how/why this happens?
Question 2: With some regularity (10% to 20% of the time maybe), I get torrents where I am connected to 10 or more seeders (of perhaps 30 or 40 total seeders), and torrent speeds vary wildly and constantly... from 0 MBps to 10 MBps with many speeds in between. There is no pattern. If speed drops to 0 MBps, it doesn't stay there very long before it is back to 1 MBps or faster, though there are times when the torrent will stay in the XXX KBps range for 10 minutes or more at a time before going faster or slower for some period of time. I have had as many as 3 torrents behaving like that at the same time. And if I add a 4th torrent with a lot of seeders, it can be screaming fast and consistently fast, or slower (XXX KBps range) and stay consistently slow (usually with few seeders available). So the 4th torrent acts "normal" in terms of speed (speeds change, but not in wild swings) while 1 to 3 other torrrents are constantly all over the place in terms of speeds. Initially I thought my ISP was throttling torrents in spite of my using a VPN, but those fast torrents happening at the same time as 1 to 3 constantly wandering speeds of simultaneous torrents pretty much rules out ISP throttling. I think?
Related question: Can torrents show fake numbers of seeders and leechers in qbittorrent? (i.e. show 30 to 50 leechers when there really are none?)