Basic Torrent Questions - Connection - Queuing.

[Vectraat]

Under "Options" --> "Connection" -->  Connection Limits.

a.) Is "Global Maximum number of connections" the amount of people who can download from you at the same time? So if I only wanted 5 simultaneous downloads at the same time, I'd just set 5 instead of 500? How is this different from Torrent Queuing --> Maximum active downloads/uploads?

b.) Maximum number of connections per torrent. Currently set to 100, but I don't see why I wouldn't want to max this?

c.) What is "Global maximum number of upload slots" ?

d.) What is "Maximum number of upload slots per torrent" ?

[Switeck]

a) No, "Global Maximum number of connections" is the max number of peers + seeds (and a few other ip connections) to allow at once. Setting it too high can overload slow internet connections, unstable networking (due to faulty network drivers/routers/modems), or contended/congested/poor wifi. It may need to be as low as 20-100 for slow broadband connections or bad networking conditions and almost everything else will need to be a smaller number than that.

b) Maximum number of connections per torrent is pretty much the max peers + seeds to allow to connect to your torrent at once. Even ridiculously fast internet connections, like 10 gigabits/second might be better off with that number set lower. I recommend 50 while downloading for internet connections with less than 100 mbit/sec upload and only 10 connections per torrent while only seeding (after all downloads have completed -- because seeds don't need to stay connected to other seeds).
EACH torrent typically needs 4-10 max connections allowed to run smoothly, so setting max connections to just 5 won't work well for 5 simultaneous downloads at the same time -- even if each torrent only got 1 peer or seed connection, those could be very slow or "dead" ones! (I mean dead ones in the sense that they give nothing and refuse to download from your end.)

It's easier to answer d) first, so...
d) "Inside" the Maximum number of connections per torrent is "Maximum number of upload slots per torrent". A really busy downloading torrent may be connected to 100 peers+seeds, say 50 of each. But it can only upload to the peers, since the seeds already have 100% of the torrent. "Maximum number of upload slots per torrent" limits the number of peers to upload to at once PER torrent, like only 10 of them -- so that means at any given moment qBitTorrent might be uploading to 0-10 of the 50 peers and NOT uploading to 40-50 of those peers. Only the peers qBitTorrent is (or has in the last 10 minutes) encouraged to upload BACK to you to return the favor -- it's a core rule of the BitTorrent protocol and makes "giving more to others" worthwhile. By limiting "Maximum number of upload slots per torrent" to LESS than max peers, only those peers that have given you the MOST consistently get to download from you...encouraging them to give MORE.

c) Just as uploading to every peer at once on a torrent is a bad idea if you have really busy torrents, uploading to every peer on every torrent is a really bad idea. So "Global maximum number of upload slots" can limit that to far less -- even to the point that if it's LESS than "Maximum number of upload slots per torrent" then the lower global upload slot limit will limit 1 busy torrent from uploading to more peers.

Here's where the "math gets ugly":
The numbers of all 4 settings depend entirely on maximum usable/sustainable upload speed -- and to a lesser degree also max usable download speed while downloading torrents.
Too many connections and upload slots, globally or per torrent, can REDUCE download and upload speeds immensely.
Too few can also REDUCE download and upload speeds immensely!
This even depends on how many active torrents you have, how active each torrent is, and how fast the peers/seeds are on those torrents.
Private trackers often tend to have faster-on-average peers+seeds -- you won't see very many slow DSL peers+seeds there!
Slow DSL peers+seeds are unlikely to be able to upload even 100 KiloBYTES/second in their BitTorrent clients because they often only have 0.1-1 megabits/second upload bandwidth.
Even cable ISPs often only give 1-50 megabits/second upload bandwidth -- with 10-20 mbit/sec being "typical best", which only works out to be about 1-2 MegaBYTES/second usable upload bandwidth assuming nobody else is sharing that service. 4+ people in 1 household are going to be rather upset with a BitTorrent uploader that tries to upload at 80+% of max upload speed 24/7! (likewise if at >80+% of max download!)

So for example, with 100 KB/sec max usable upload speed (assuming 1 mbit/sec usable upload bandwidth) ...I'd use these values:
"Global maximum number of upload slots" SHOULDN'T be higher than 20 ever -- because that works out to be only 5 KB/sec upload speed (56k dial-up modem speeds) per upload slot (100/20) and probably would work better if only 5-10. Other peers will typically only upload back to your peer if you're uploading to them as fast or faster than what peers are giving to them, so setting this "wrongly" can mean uploading a whole lot and almost no peers give anything back!

"Maximum number of upload slots per torrent" depends on how many torrents you want active at once -- each needs at least 2 upload slots, so that put a max active torrents at once of 10 (with 20 max global upload slots.) Torrents will do a little better with 3-5 max upload slots per torrent -- uploading to at most 3-5 peers at once.

"Global Maximum number of connections" depends on max usable download speed as well as max sustainable upload speed. If you can download at 1 MegaBYTE/second (10x upload speed's 100 KB/sec), then even 30 global max connections is sufficient and 50 likely to be overkill. But if you can download at 3+ MegaBYTES/second and/or on lots of public torrents with slow peers+seeds, then 50-200 global max connections may work a little better. (Only a little better because each slow peer/seed may give nothing, so 100+ more peers/seeds that give nothing won't increase DL or UL speeds.)

Even seemingly idle peers+seeds are sending/sharing Peer EXchange (PEX) lists of ips for other peers/seeds on the same torrent (on public torrents anyway), HAVE torrent piece messages (for what parts of the torrent they have, to compute and update their percent complete), download/upload requests (typically including requested piece lists), tracker exchange (if enabled, it's a bad idea to use due to poisoning attacks and similar/duplicate trackers), possibly Local Seed Discovery (seeing if peers/seeds are on the same LAN as yours so they can ignore normal max speed limits, which can cause massive lag if incorrectly considered "local"), and lastly "hey I'm still here" TCP/IP Keep-Alive messages (to avoid their connection from being broken due to inactivity).
All that activity costs bandwidth and speed, especially with 100's of connected seeds+peers at once!

Maximum number of connections per torrent needs to be equal or greater than max upload slots per torrent, perhaps 2-5x greater if you're mainly going after torrents that have far more seeds than peers or if most peers are really slow. Private trackers won't need as many connections because most of the time is spent seeding and even 10 seeds on 1 torrent can max out download speed.
Max number of connections per torrent also needs to be lower or equal to Global max connections. (Equal if only 1 torrent is allowed to run at a time.)

A weird problem with max connections per torrent is peers can get "mad" if you don't download OR upload to them within ~5-10 minutes of connecting to them. These peers may auto-ignore or even auto/manual ban or at least disconnect your peer/seed after that time. So having a lot of connections that aren't used on a torrent that takes a long time to download or seed can mean they start ignoring your end -- refusing to upload OR download! After that time, your peer could upload a lot to them and they would still refuse to "give" upload back because they've already ignored/snubed your peer for giving them nothing earlier. They may also auto-disconnect from your peer/seed "due to inactivity" which can often result in them connecting and disconnecting over-and-over again many times in an hour...with each reconnect slowing everything else down slightly, especially if BitTorrent encryption is used (which makes the initial connection handshake negotiation process use far more bandwidth).

Beyond this, there can be some "overlap" where 1 torrent is allowed more than its "fair share" of max connections or upload slots from the global max supply.
So if global max connections is 100, it's ok for 1 torrent to be allowed a max of 20-50 connections even if there's 5-10 other torrents active -- assuming most of the other torrents are seeding and only have 0-5 peers connected at a time.
Same with global max upload slots. 1 torrent could have a max of 5 upload slots out of the 10 total so long as there's no more than 5 other seeding torrents active (which get 1 upload slot each).

Don't run too many torrents at once, especially busy ones, or your download/upload speeds from/to peers+seeds can be very slow!
10 active torrents with 50 peers or seeds each could be 500 total connections -- so might be better to limit to only 5 active torrents with 20 max connections each (5-10 while seeding) for 100 max global/total connections.

Doubling max usable upload and download speed does not mean max connections and max upload slots can be also doubled. Law of diminishing returns quickly apply, so it takes more like 10x as much upload/download speed to merit doubling max connections/max upload slots!

[Vectraat]

Uh ok, that was a bit much for me. Was hoping for a simpler cliff notes explanation. I do appreciate the effort though.

My connection is 300/300

What numbers would you recommend for for "Number of Connections" ? I left the default values...
-Global maximum number of connections: 200
-Maximum number of connected peers per torrent: 50
-Number of upload slots per torrent: 4

For Queuing - "Maximum number of active torrents (upload or download)" should be what?
I'd think you wouldn't want too many at the same time as that may wear down the disk quicker and slow down your upload across torrents? 

[Switeck]

300/300 megabits/sec?
If so, that's probably about 30 MegaBYTES/second usable download and upload speed...possibly at the same time. Peak burst speeds might be ~36 MegaBYTES/second.
I'd use 30000 KiloBYTES/second as the max upload speed limit in qBitTorrent.
If you need a max download speed limit, put it the same 30000 KB/sec as upload...or even as high as 35000 KB/sec if you don't mind minor web surfing slowdowns while qBT runs.

Global max connections can be pretty high, because you've got way beyond barely DSL speeds...but like you mentioned too many peers+seeds at once could be trying to access the HDD/s too much at once. Better to have fewer + faster because they can do bigger block reads and writes.
I often download to a ramdrive and have qBT or other BT clients auto-move from ramdrive to HDD when the download finishes. Minimizes file fragmentation on the HDD.

200 global max connections is fine, as is 50 max connections per torrent.

But 4 upload slots per torrent is way too low -- increase that to 30.
Global max upload slots needs to provide at least 50 KB/sec per upload slot to encourage faster peers to give more back to your qBT in return. That works out to be 600 global upload slots, more than global max connections! So better to use a global max upload slots of slightly less than global max connections instead -- like 150-180.

For Queuing - "Maximum number of active torrents (upload or download)" depends quite a bit on what you're downloading+seeding!
If you're going after huge 100+ GB torrents, I don't recommend more than maybe 10 of them...at least if they typically have 20+ peers on them.
On the other hand, if most of your torrents are <200 MB size and typically have 0-3 peers you could set that as high as 100 without problems.

Looking at the problem another way, 200 global max connections with individual torrents "grabbing" up to 50 connections each works out to be only 4 max active torrents...maybe 5 if each has slightly less than 50 connections each.

[Vectraat]

Yes, 300 Megabits or 37.5 Megabytes. Sometimes it goes higher than that.

1.) Ok, with these speeds in mind I've set qBittorrent for:
-Global maximum number of connections: 200
-Maximum number of connections per torrent: 50
-Global maximum number of upload slots: 150
-Maximum number of upload slots per torrent: 30

I think that's what you were suggesting anyway...

On another note, I actually ran a uTorrent Setup Guide to compare uTorrent's recommended settings with the qBittorrent settings and it suggested:
-Global maximum number of connections: 950
-Maximum number of connected peers per torrent: 125
-Number of upload slots per torrent: 50
-Upload Limit 23.9 MB/s
-Max active torrents (Upload or Download): 20

And that was with an under-evaluation of my bandwidth at: 201 Mbit/s.

2.) For Queuing, I'm mostly seeding files that range from 8 GB to 70 GB. I don't download from my clients very often.
I currently have Torrent Queuing disabled. Since this is my file size range, what would you recommend for:
-Maximum active downloads
-Maximum active uploads
-Maximum active torrents

Could I set 3-4 active uploads or could that piss off privates?

3.) I haven't set Global Rate Limits on my UL/DL speed. I know people say it should be about 80% of your total bandwidth (upload), but I don't bother with it because my bandwidth never chokes.

4.) When you right click a torrent file and select "Limit upload rate" is that specific to the torrent or is it global?

[Switeck]

1.) Yes, those were the numbers I was suggesting.

Nemo and I have a feature request that qBitTorrent needs a separate max connection setting for seeding torrents, since they don't need to connect to seeds:
https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/issues/2193
So that's why I suggest lower max connections while only seeding.

uTorrent's Setup Guide was created around 2005 and base their numbers on the assumption that the "average" peer or seed is a low-end ADSL with 0.5-1 mbit/sec total upload speed. That means it expects you to need a LOT of connections per torrent to max out download speeds. Even the replacement guide I came up with is over 10 years out of date and based on poor assumptions even for then. uTorrent sadly doesn't even have user-configurable max global upload slots -- the hidden upload slot limiter has very broken edge conditions that will cause torrents to randomly quit seeding to lots of peers at once.

2.) I don't recommend enabling Torrent Queuing in qBitTorrent because it's seriously buggy -- torrents will refuse to start downloading unless forced and same for seeding torrents.
I instead recommend manually starting and stopping torrents. I do use queuing in uTorrent, but also have to manually force start and manually stop a LOT of torrents to manage it all.
Generally, I don't even bother counting all the started-but-inactive seeding torrents so long as I'm not hit by a flash crowd/flash downloader that tries to grab a bunch of them at once.

Demand for those 8-70 GB torrents is as important as their size. If there's seldom more than 2 peers trying to download them at any given time, you can run a lot more at once.
If you don't download very often, then you can limit max active downloads (downloading torrents) to 1-4 at once.

Private tracker sites often have maybe 1 torrent out of 10 with active peers on them. Peers download fast because of excess seeds...then they're also seeds trying to claw back their "ratio" that they just spent.
So might as well have Maximum active uploads (seeding torrents) set to 5-30 at a time. It only matters if you already have lots of active torrents and want to stop/pause some of them.

qBitTorrent's Maximum active torrents counts started-but-inactive seeding torrents, so it needs to be set higher than both max active downloading+seeding torrents combined -- like 40-100. Exceeding that number should cause extra torrents to become queued instead of starting. But like I already mentioned, qBT's queuing system is buggy and I don't trust it.

3.) Yes, you have so much DL and UL speed that few can match it. (my DL is roughly 1/3 as fast and my UL is only about 1/25th as fast)

4.) Pretty sure that's for just that torrent. I've never done that in qBitTorrent, but have done similar in uTorrent to limit the 1 super-active torrent I have to prevent it "hogging" my upload. Enabling regular or strict Super seeding and/or setting its max upload slots to only 1-3 also caused my "hogging" torrent to not hog as much.

[Vectraat]

Hmm...

Well, that's unfortunate about the buggy qBittorrent queuing system. I'm glad I asked or I may have run into problems. The reason I was somewhat curious about torrent queuing is because while I do have an unlimited data plan for my 300/300, I speculate that I have a data soft cap--although my ISP won't confirm this--and I'm seeding about 10 TB. Often times I'll have 10-15 active torrents. I imagine that's not good for disk health and seeding that many torrents at the same time would probably cause some of those torrents to upload slower than what they should, but I'm just guessing here. I don't think my network should be a bottleneck, but maybe the disk (7200 RPM IronWolf) is? I don't know. Just makes more sense to me to set a queue UL cap of 5-7 torrents instead of UL'ing 10-15 at a time. Is my thinking wrong on this?

I do use uTorrent v2.2.1 as a secondary local client but it doesn't play nice connectivity-wise when qBittorrent is running (I'm using a different listening port.) When I shut down qBittorrent, uTorrent says the connectivity is good. So I'm thinking on using Transmission in addition to qBittorrent instead of uTorrent and splitting that 10 TB between the two clients and if I'm being hit too hard for hours at a time on one client, I can just close it down and keep the other open. I dunno. Is this a silly solution? I also don't want it to look like I'm running a server as that's against my (and probably most ISP's) TOS. But maybe constant uploading wouldn't look like server-related activity to an ISP, I dunno. I'm trying to keep the UL'ing somewhat reasonable as I don't want them to shape my traffic after a while because I only have one available port that I use for port-forwarding.

So far I've used qBittorrent, uTorrent v2.2.1, Deluge, ruTorrent and now maybe Transmission. There are things I like and things I don't like about each client. I run Deluge from my seedbox and HTTPS to myself hence why I rarely need my local clients to download anything; just need them for seeding as my seedbox is only 1 TB. So I'll do the heavy lifting from my seedbox and aim for long-term local seeding....I just need to find a better solution than what I'm currently using perhaps. All these torrent settings get kinda confusing and figuring out what does or doesn't work good in each client is time-consuming.

 

[Switeck]

"Just makes more sense to me to set a queue UL cap of 5-7 torrents instead of UL'ing 10-15 at a time. Is my thinking wrong on this?"

Yes and no -- if 9+ of the 10-15 torrents have few peers and the remaining ones only have a couple, then not only will it not be a huge workout for the HDD it won't keep your upload busy either.

"I do use uTorrent v2.2.1 as a secondary local client but it doesn't play nice connectivity-wise when qBittorrent is running (I'm using a different listening port.) When I shut down qBittorrent, uTorrent says the connectivity is good."

Do you have UPnP and NAT-PMP enabled on both? That puts extra load on routers and if you manually forwarded ports is pointless.
Running multiple BitTorrent clients at once can be hard on networking if they are all using DHT and LPD/LSD at the same time and your networking isn't the greatest.
Doesn't help if each BT client also has 100+ active connections... (high half open rate and uTP retry rate doesn't help either)

"I can just close it down and keep the other open. I dunno. Is this a silly solution?"

It shouldn't be necessary, but it's not silly if that's what you need to have decent connectivity in uTorrent.

Your ISP can already see if you're uploading...and even 1 TB/month probably raises some flags for them. If they want to throttle your line to nil, they probably can barring enforced laws to stop them.

"So far I've used qBittorrent, uTorrent v2.2.1, Deluge, ruTorrent and now maybe Transmission."

I've tried all but ruTorrent -- and I can attest to problems with each of them. Making a BitTorrent is VERY hard to get right.

[Vectraat]

"Do you have UPnP and NAT-PMP enabled on both? That puts extra load on routers and if you manually forwarded ports is pointless."

-I'm using my VPN (PIA) port forwarding number. UPnP and NAT-PMP is enabled on both.

"Running multiple BitTorrent clients at once can be hard on networking if they are all using DHT and LPD/LSD at the same time and your networking isn't the greatest."

-DHT, PeX and LPD is enabled on my clients, but it doesn't really matter because they're disabled on privates. IIRC you need DHT, PeX and LPD for publics, so I always left them enabled in case I ever needed to grab something from a public (which is very rare).

"Your ISP can already see if you're uploading...and even 1 TB/month probably raises some flags for them. If they want to throttle your line to nil, they probably can barring enforced laws to stop them."

-Yeah, they can see that I'm uploading, but they don't know what I'm uploading because I use a VPN.

1.) Should I update to qBittorrent v4.1.4? I'm currently on: v4.1.1. I usually wait a while before I update to avoid any potential bugs.

2.) This has always kinda confused me a bit...

a.) "Seeds" 0 (113) means there's 113 people seeding the files, but I'm not sure if I ever see that "0" go up to 1/2/3/4 etc.
b.) "Peers" 0 (1) or 2 (2). What does this mean?
c.) If I see Seeds 0 (4) and Peers 1 (2), does this mean that the person downloading is ONLY connected to 2 of the 4 seeds?

"and I can attest to problems with each of them."

Mind sharing the problems? (Cliff notes).

Do you think this kind of sustained activity 24/7 is too much for my HDD/300/300 connect or may cause my ISP to wonder what's going on?

[Switeck]

"-I'm using my VPN (PIA) port forwarding number. UPnP and NAT-PMP is enabled on both."

DISABLE UPnP and NAT-PMP if you're using VPN (PIA) or most any VPN or proxy. UPnP and NAT-PMP will try to port forward your local router, not the remote VPN server...causing a possible security failure for the VPN.

"-DHT, PeX and LPD is enabled on my clients, but it doesn't really matter because they're disabled on privates."

DHT and LPD are both global networks -- they run even if all your torrents are private. Either disable DHT and LPD/LSD on all your BT clients or enable them on only 1 that you're likely to download public torrents on that needs them.

"1.) Should I update to qBittorrent v4.1.4? I'm currently on: v4.1.1."

Wait a version or 2 more if you're not having major problems with v4.1.1. There's some big fixes coming through soon for libtorrent + qBitTorrent.

"2.) This has always kinda confused me a bit..." ..."a.) "Seeds" 0 (113) means there's 113 people seeding the files"

If you're seeding a torrent, you won't stay connected to other seeds except extremely briefly. (milliseconds even) So 0 should always be the first number for seeding torrents.
And no, that doesn't mean there's 113 people seeding those files. It means 113 different ip addresses were reported as being a seed for that file possibly over the last few days/weeks/months. A single computer can have multiple ip addresses (IPv4, IPv6, LAN ips inside the router, maybe a separate wifi mixed in, etc), the internet ip can change regularly, and other BitTorrent clients and trackers may be misreporting seeds and peers that never actually existed.

"b.) "Peers" 0 (1) or 2 (2). What does this mean?"

0 (1) = 0 connected peers at this precise moment out of 1 peer believed to be on that torrent sometime in the last few hours/days/weeks/etc.
2 (2) = 2 connected peers at this precise moment out of 2 peers believed to be on that torrent.

"c.) If I see Seeds 0 (4) and Peers 1 (2), does this mean that the person downloading is ONLY connected to 2 of the 4 seeds?"

The lone, connected peer out of the 2 "possible" peers may or may not be connected to the 4 "possible" seeds. Their connectivity is only indirectly communicated to your seed via PEX (Peer EXchange), which is disabled on private torrents.

"Mind sharing the problems? (Cliff notes)."

https://qbforums.shiki.hu/index.php/topic,3956.0.html   EXTREME Speed Tests of various BitTorrent Apps
...and other posts I've made at this forum, especially concerning Deluge, Tixati, Transmission, uTorrent.

"Do you think this kind of sustained activity 24/7 is too much for my HDD/300/300 connect or may cause my ISP to wonder what's going on?"

That picture shows you connecting to only 0 to 2 peers on each of those torrents and no seeds. I'm guessing all those torrents are seeding. That's only going to add up to being a big deal if you have 100's or 1000's of active torrents with active peers on them. Individually, the speeds aren't even very good -- are some of the downloaders on really crappy DSL?

[Vectraat]

"DISABLE UPnP and NAT-PMP if you're using VPN (PIA) or most any VPN or proxy. UPnP and NAT-PMP will try to port forward your local router, not the remote VPN server...causing a possible security failure for the VPN."

Hmm, well my "router" is a modem/router combo given to me for free by my ISP. I don't know how it would result in a "security failure". I have my VPN kill switch enabled, and PIA set up under "Advanced" --> Network Interface, which will prevent qBittorrent from making a connection if my VPN isn't active. So 2x fail safe options. Are you absolutely certain I don't need UPnP and NAT-PMP?

"DHT and LPD are both global networks -- they run even if all your torrents are private. Either disable DHT and LPD/LSD on all your BT clients or enable them on only 1 that you're likely to download public torrents on that needs them."

Ok, so...
DHT = decentralized network.
PeX = Peer Exchange.
LPD = Local Peer Discovery.
LSD is LPD?

What benefit is it to disable these if the tracker has them disabled by default? Seems kinda irrelevant? 

Ok, It's kinda sounding like this seeds/peers thing is largely irrelevant/not useful information at all based on your explanations. Too much uncertainty when it comes to interpreting that data/unreliable. 

"That picture shows you connecting to only 0 to 2 peers on each of those torrents and no seeds. I'm guessing all those torrents are seeding. That's only going to add up to being a big deal if you have 100's or 1000's of active torrents with active peers on them. Individually, the speeds aren't even very good -- are some of the downloaders on really crappy DSL?"

How is there no seeds? It says from top to bottom the number of "Seeds" aka "IP addresses" as you put it: 52/37/4/73/17/83 etc. You consider those numbers to be low?

So the photo of me seeding 17 torrents at the same time isn't alarming? 24/7 activity like that is fine to a residential ISP?  I don't think I'd ever see anything close to 100 at the same time. 

As for the speeds, well, I'm not sure why some of the speeds are shitty. Even when I seed stuff from my 20 Gbps seedbox, sometimes speeds will be slow. Good speeds from what I understand depends on good/bad peering, which can be random / location based. I figured in some situations maybe that's too much data for my HDD to access at the same time which creates a bit of a data transfer bottleneck, hence the interest in torrent queuing. But also, yes, a surprising number of people on privates DO have shitty connects, but there are also many beastly connects out there that put even put my 20 Gbps seedbox to shame, so of course, what is my 300/300 gonna do up against that. :-)

So 1 (1) Peers means 1 connected peer to another. I mean, it HAS to mean that based on the screen shot. But then you're saying in other situations "Possible" / "Believed" Peers.

I dunno. Kinda confused, probably shoulda waited until I got a good nights sleep before posting a response.

[Switeck]

"Are you absolutely certain I don't need UPnP and NAT-PMP?"

Absolutely yes.
https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/helpdesk/kb/articles/how-do-i-enable-port-forwarding-on-my-vpn
No mention there of UPnP.
UPnP is a poor substitute for manual port forwarding, if you know what port is needed in advance as well as what target ip (typically a LAN ip) the port is to be forwarded to.
It's likely qBT's UPnP will port forward the WRONG thing -- your modem/router combo box instead of the VPN.

"What benefit is it to disable these if the tracker has them disabled by default? Seems kinda irrelevant?"

DHT and probably LPD (LSD is same thing by a different name) are global networks in the sense that it doesn't matter if some or ALL of your torrents have DHT disabled on them.
DHT will run even if you have no torrents using it, connecting to probably 100's if not 1000's of ips per hour...on each BitTorrent client you have it running on.
LPD will do similarly and use either broadcast or multicast packets to do it. Even if the BitTorrent client handles these packets correctly, some networking hardware seriously doesn't:
https://forum.utorrent.com/topic/62993-lpd-multicast-flood-from-utorrent/

"How is there no seeds?"

Sorry, I wasn't even more wordy. I meant: "shows you connecting to ...no seeds."
Not connecting to isn't the same as there is no seeds. Seeds don't stay connected to other seeds -- often they don't even TRY to connect to other seeds, at least more than once.

"You consider those numbers to be low?"

No -- Many of the torrents I download have fewer than 10 reported and I'm lucky to connect to 4 out of 10.

"So 1 (1) Peers means 1 connected peer to another."

Not quite. 1 (1) Peers means 1 connected peer and (1 reported/possible/probable peer) -- it's even possible for the first 1 to not mean the same ip as the other (1)!