Swarm numbers missing on some trackers

Windows specific questions, problems.
rysvald

Re: Swarm numbers missing on some trackers

Post by rysvald »

ciaobaby wrote:
If you look at the third line in the original screenshot in the first post... Can you see it like that?
When it was first loaded yes. 
Well, it is not so obvious to me
When your client is not actively seeking pieces from the swarm tracker (seeding) it does not need to get any  seed counts when 'scraping' a tracker.  ( https://wiki.theory.org/BitTorrentSpeci ... Convention )  it only needs a total peer count
Ok, so why do every other torrent client show those numbers even when they don't need to?
And is it then considered a bug that I can see the total number of seeds on some trackers long after download is completed?

Even if it is not necessary to know about other seeds in order to seed, it is fundamental information for determining swarm health and to make subsequent decisions regarding continued seeding or not.
Attachments
totalseeds.png
ciaobaby

Re: Swarm numbers missing on some trackers

Post by ciaobaby »

Ok, so why do every other torrent client show those numbers even when they don't need to?
Because they choose to probably.
And is it then considered a bug that I can see the total number of seeds on some trackers long after download is completed?
No, because it depends on the tracker. Some trackers do send seed counts to seeding clients, ... ... Some choose not to. Some clients choose to use the numbers, ... ... some don't.

It's not a particularly big deal, if your client is seeding, ... ... You don't need to know how many seeds there are.
rysvald

Re: Swarm numbers missing on some trackers

Post by rysvald »

[quote="ciaobaby"]Because they choose to probably.

No, because it depends on the tracker. Some trackers do send seed counts to seeding clients, ... ... Some choose not to. Some clients choose to use the numbers, ... ... some don't.[/quote]

But on the tracker of the provided example torrent it seems like they actually choose to include those numbers...

When I put this into my browser: http://tracker.etree.org:6969/scrape
I get this: d5:filesd0:d8:completei10e10:downloadedi252e10:incompletei0eee5:flagsd20:min_request_intervali18000eee
Which I assume is an base example of the scrape format provided by the tracker. Which if it was a real torrent should have been translated to 10 seeds and 0 peers.

When I put the example torrent into uTorrent or TorrentSpy it presents the 35 peers separated into 33 seeds and 2 peers. (see screenshot), while qBittorent only shows them as a lump of 35 peers in total and only under the tracker tab and completely ignores all of them in the main window...

So if I were to summarize, then it is a design choice to use that information sometimes and to sometimes don't and it is just an weird arbitrary design choice made by all other clients to present it always?

[quote="ciaobaby"]It's not a particularly big deal, if your client is seeding, ... ... You don't need to know how many seeds there are.
[/quote]And when I want to clean up and stop seeding some torrents 6 months later I should make a guess on the swarm health?
Attachments
torrentspy.png
Last edited by rysvald on Sun Mar 22, 2015 12:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
ciaobaby

Re: Swarm numbers missing on some trackers

Post by ciaobaby »

6 months later I should make a guess on the swarm health?
You check  how much upload your client is actually contributing to the swarm, it is the only real way to know. Peer numbers are vague and unreliable, the ONLY thing you can be sure about is connected peers and upload data.
rysvald

Re: Swarm numbers missing on some trackers

Post by rysvald »

Is it possible that all that is needed is some tweeking of the interpretation of scrape data received from trackers?
Such as ignoring unrecognized stuff...
ciaobaby

Re: Swarm numbers missing on some trackers

Post by ciaobaby »

That would be a issue to take up at libtorrent, if such an issue does exist.
tundra

Re: Swarm numbers missing on some trackers

Post by tundra »

If its an problem with libtorrent, I think any client that uses libtorrent would be affected.. But it only seems to be this client lol
Like I said in my other post it only seems to be on php based trackers. Xbt ones seem to have np with showing the stats..
stihia

Re: Swarm numbers missing on some trackers

Post by stihia »

[quote="tundra"]
If its an problem with libtorrent, I think any client that uses libtorrent would be affected.. But it only seems to be this client lol
Like I said in my other post it only seems to be on php based trackers. Xbt ones seem to have np with showing the stats..
[/quote]

I also think it's about qBittorent, because I've run some tests also with halite 0.4.0.1 (which is a libtorrent based client) and µT 2.2.1.
The tests were made 2-3 weeks ago on few public and 4 private trackers.
On the public ones there were no issues from any of the 3 clients mentioned above.
On the private ones only halite and µT showed the peers in the transfer list regardless the tracker (public or private). qB 3.2.0 had problems in this regard on 2 trackers and showed correctly on the other ones.
I would not care too much about private public trackers, but for the private ones showing the peers in the transfer list it's really important IMO...
Last edited by stihia on Sun Jul 05, 2015 8:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
ciaobaby

Re: Swarm numbers missing on some trackers

Post by ciaobaby »

but for the private ones showing the peers in the transfer list it's really important IMO.
Why?
stihia

Re: Swarm numbers missing on some trackers

Post by stihia »

Because, as rysvald said above, it's easier to deal with a bunch of torrents.
But, first of all, because there are worse, rarely maintained or even abandoned clients that are capable to show the peers in the transfer list.
ciaobaby

Re: Swarm numbers missing on some trackers

Post by ciaobaby »

rarely maintained or even abandoned clients that are capable to show the peers in the transfer list.
Like uTorrent and BitTorrent it's more likely that you see cached (out of date) peer counts that are useless and misleading.
stihia

Re: Swarm numbers missing on some trackers

Post by stihia »

ciaobaby wrote:
rarely maintained or even abandoned clients that are capable to show the peers in the transfer list.
Like uTorrent and BitTorrent it's more likely that you see cached (out of date) peer counts that are useless and misleading.
No, it isn't, there are private trackers that allow access to peer lists. I've never saw the other clients showing something else that those tracker's peers list, and probably you know that better than me. I would not sustain what I've said if I couldn't prove it with screenshots.
Anyway, I don't want to waste anyone's time here.
Could you say at least if this minor problem would be solved in a foreseeable future?
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Re: Swarm numbers missing on some trackers

Post by Nemo »

Private trackers do show that information when im running qBittorrent but public torrents doesn't always. I personally think that this has to do with ''Always announce to all trackers'' and ''Exchange trackers'' features confusing qBittorrent to get any number to show there. Instead it shows 0. qBittorrent could calculate a rough estimation based on peer exchange numbers perhaps (just a guess though).

I also do prefer it to show that information with any torrents, not only with private ones where only 1 tracker is being contacted (receiving all the needed information by 1 tracker instead 10+). Even if the given numbers are incorrect (they are never 100% correct anyway) you still get an idea cause 0 says completely nothing.

I think that this is something that sledge needs to answer so we can know if this is even possible. And if not, why it isn't possible and what the restrictions are.

I also like this idea:
Display more information in tracker tab
stihia

Re: Swarm numbers missing on some trackers

Post by stihia »

It would be nice to see this implemented for the public trackers too, but I would put the private ones first though.
Let's hope sledge will have some "spare" time to look into this problem.
ciaobaby

Re: Swarm numbers missing on some trackers

Post by ciaobaby »

From the libtorrent manual
num_peers is the number of peers this torrent currently is connected to. Peer connections that are in the half-open state (is attempting to connect) or are queued for later connection attempt do not count. Although they are visible in the peer list when you call get_peer_info().

num_complete and num_incomplete are set to -1 if the tracker did not send any scrape data in its announce reply. This data is optional and may not be available from all trackers. If these are not -1, they are the total number of peers that are seeding (complete) and the total number of peers that are still downloading (incomplete) this torrent.

list_seeds and list_peers are the number of seeds in our peer list and the total number of peers (including seeds) respectively. We are not necessarily connected to all the peers in our peer list. This is the number of peers we know of in total, including banned peers and peers that we have failed to connect to.

connect_candidates is the number of peers in this torrent's peer list that is a candidate to be connected to. i.e. It has fewer connect attempts than the max fail count, it is not a seed if we are a seed, it is not banned etc. If this is 0, it means we don't know of any more peers that we can try.
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