Hello,
I really like QBittorrent, but I'm having trouble with managing my data usage.
Basically, I'm trying to set it up so that I share 2 to 1. So, for every 1GB torrent that I download I'm willing to continue seeding 2GB's worth of that same torrent and then remove it. Currently though, although I thought I set everything up correctly, my data usage is ridiculous. For instance, I will download a 3GB movie and then find out I've uploaded 30GB of data. I know it's QBittorrent that's the culprit (or rather my configuration), because my data usage drops way down when I quit QBittorrent for a couple of days.
So, anyway, rather than waste everyone's time explaining my current settings (which are obviously screwed up), can any of you experts show me what my settings should be for my particular requirements?
Thanks in advance!
Optimum Settings for 'Reasonable' Data Usage
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Switeck
Re: Optimum Settings for 'Reasonable' Data Usage
Are you uploading without a set upload speed limit, which causes overloads and typically knocks download speed down to <25% max?
Depending on how imbalanced DL-to-UL your connection is and how little UL you have, you may need to set an UL speed limit somewhere between 50-90% of the sustainable max upload speed.
EACH downloaded packet has to be ACKnowledged by the receiver. Each piece has to be reported as (I now) HAVE to connected peers/seeds. Torrent pieces have to be requested. DHT may be running. PEX reports ip+port lists to other peers. Every one of those requires upload, so if you're uploading pieces to other peers without speed limits the resulting overloads causes most of those other activities to get lost, slow, or fail completely. It's also why many people cannot web surf smoothly while their BitTorrent program is running...despite having a "fast" internet connection.
Even with a really fast connection, you don't want to be uploading to every connected peer all at the same time if you're connecting to 50+ peers or seeds per torrent.
So...How fast is your average upload speed per upload slot?
It needs to be about 5 to 100 KiloBYTES/second. (100 only if you have an outrageously fast connection, like symmetric gigabit/sec or faster.)
Peers will automatically SNUB your connection if you upload too slowly to them...after that even if you continue uploading slowly to them, they'll still give nothing in return.
Peers typically have a limited number of upload slots of their own. They may connect to >50 peers but only upload to 4 of them -- you want to be 1 of those 4!
One upload slot per torrent is almost always an optimistic unchoke -- it randomly uploads to nearly anyone, trying to help out new peers and to find faster peers.
The other upload slots go to the peers uploading the fastest to it. You give such peers 20-50 KB/sec, they might give back 100-1000 KB/sec.
But if you upload 1000+ KB/sec to them, they might overload slightly and only upload 50-200 KB/sec to you in return.
On torrents with few seeds but many peers, fast uploaders almost always get shafted -- getting back far less than half their upload speed. Good settings might reduce that imbalance closer to 1-to-1.
The reverse of your problem is extremely common on private trackers. There might be 50+ seeds per peer -- a tracker update may hand out 50 random ips and not even include the 1 peer despite your end being a seed! Kinda hard to upload to a peer if you can't connect to it. Or a new peer downloads the whole torrent before doing its 2nd tracker update, so there's even less chances of finding that peer before it's already a seed too. Being firewalled on a private tracker with strict ratio requirements is a "death sentence".
From your ISP's point-of-view, what they consider "reasonable" basically means your average usage rate should be less than 1/20th of the max speed for your connection. It's why most give far less upload than download in the first place. They sell you a service -- but they want you to barely use it. Beyond that, the worst time for them to have to deal with someone downloading and/or uploading quickly is during their peak evening hours -- typically about 5-10 PM on weekdays and to a lesser degree about noon till 10 PM on weekends. qBitTorrent can be set up to download and upload much slower between 5-10 PM every day if you want to be nicer to them...and nicer to your neighbors, because if your ISP's local node is overloaded they suffer too.
Depending on how imbalanced DL-to-UL your connection is and how little UL you have, you may need to set an UL speed limit somewhere between 50-90% of the sustainable max upload speed.
EACH downloaded packet has to be ACKnowledged by the receiver. Each piece has to be reported as (I now) HAVE to connected peers/seeds. Torrent pieces have to be requested. DHT may be running. PEX reports ip+port lists to other peers. Every one of those requires upload, so if you're uploading pieces to other peers without speed limits the resulting overloads causes most of those other activities to get lost, slow, or fail completely. It's also why many people cannot web surf smoothly while their BitTorrent program is running...despite having a "fast" internet connection.
Even with a really fast connection, you don't want to be uploading to every connected peer all at the same time if you're connecting to 50+ peers or seeds per torrent.
So...How fast is your average upload speed per upload slot?
It needs to be about 5 to 100 KiloBYTES/second. (100 only if you have an outrageously fast connection, like symmetric gigabit/sec or faster.)
Peers will automatically SNUB your connection if you upload too slowly to them...after that even if you continue uploading slowly to them, they'll still give nothing in return.
Peers typically have a limited number of upload slots of their own. They may connect to >50 peers but only upload to 4 of them -- you want to be 1 of those 4!
One upload slot per torrent is almost always an optimistic unchoke -- it randomly uploads to nearly anyone, trying to help out new peers and to find faster peers.
The other upload slots go to the peers uploading the fastest to it. You give such peers 20-50 KB/sec, they might give back 100-1000 KB/sec.
But if you upload 1000+ KB/sec to them, they might overload slightly and only upload 50-200 KB/sec to you in return.
On torrents with few seeds but many peers, fast uploaders almost always get shafted -- getting back far less than half their upload speed. Good settings might reduce that imbalance closer to 1-to-1.
The reverse of your problem is extremely common on private trackers. There might be 50+ seeds per peer -- a tracker update may hand out 50 random ips and not even include the 1 peer despite your end being a seed! Kinda hard to upload to a peer if you can't connect to it. Or a new peer downloads the whole torrent before doing its 2nd tracker update, so there's even less chances of finding that peer before it's already a seed too. Being firewalled on a private tracker with strict ratio requirements is a "death sentence".
From your ISP's point-of-view, what they consider "reasonable" basically means your average usage rate should be less than 1/20th of the max speed for your connection. It's why most give far less upload than download in the first place. They sell you a service -- but they want you to barely use it. Beyond that, the worst time for them to have to deal with someone downloading and/or uploading quickly is during their peak evening hours -- typically about 5-10 PM on weekdays and to a lesser degree about noon till 10 PM on weekends. qBitTorrent can be set up to download and upload much slower between 5-10 PM every day if you want to be nicer to them...and nicer to your neighbors, because if your ISP's local node is overloaded they suffer too.
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omc
Re: Optimum Settings for 'Reasonable' Data Usage
Thanks for the feedback, but I'm thinking I may still need to try out a different torrent client that also works with Torguard. I've heard that uTorrent provides the control I'm looking for.
I like QBittorrent though, and I don't want to change. I just wish there was a simple setting where I could configure it to upload 2:1 or even 3:1. So, for every 2GB file I download I would upload 4GB to 6GB worth of data pertaining to that file. As it stands now, in the last 2 days I've downloaded 3GB worth of data, that's it, but that's resulted in over 80GB worth of data being uploaded, which is nuts.
I like QBittorrent though, and I don't want to change. I just wish there was a simple setting where I could configure it to upload 2:1 or even 3:1. So, for every 2GB file I download I would upload 4GB to 6GB worth of data pertaining to that file. As it stands now, in the last 2 days I've downloaded 3GB worth of data, that's it, but that's resulted in over 80GB worth of data being uploaded, which is nuts.
Last edited by omc on Mon Jul 03, 2017 8:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Switeck
Re: Optimum Settings for 'Reasonable' Data Usage
Much of what I stated applies to uTorrent also.
Without good settings even uTorrent will probably sit idle for hours on end waiting for downloading to improve. Worse, since uTorrent lacks a user-configurable global upload slots limit, even adding or removing torrents can seriously degrade its performance.
Warning: If you're using a VPN or proxy: index.php/topic,5085.0.html
Without good settings even uTorrent will probably sit idle for hours on end waiting for downloading to improve. Worse, since uTorrent lacks a user-configurable global upload slots limit, even adding or removing torrents can seriously degrade its performance.
Warning: If you're using a VPN or proxy: index.php/topic,5085.0.html