Jumps Torrent Download [key]
For example: my max speed is 250 kb/sec in any torrent manager, as soon as I start a download the speed gradually drops from 250kb/sec to 100 kb/sec and then to 0 kb/sec in 30 seconds, when it reaches 0kb/sec it starts increasing up to 250kb/sec back again. The cycle continues for the period of the torrent download.
Jumps Torrent Download [key]
I can overcome this issue by setting "no encryption" in torrent download settings. When "no encryption" option is used, the speed stabilizes and does not jump. This behaviour is being noticed in any torrent manager I tried. I didn't have this issue on debian with the same configuration.
This document applies to the first version (i.e. version 1.0) of the BitTorrent protocol specification. Currently, this applies to the torrent file structure, peer wire protocol, and the Tracker HTTP/HTTPS protocol specifications. As newer revisions of each protocol are defined, they should be specified on their own separate pages, not here.
The tracker is an HTTP/HTTPS service which responds to HTTP GET requests. The requests include metrics from clients that help the tracker keep overall statistics about the torrent. The response includes a peer list that helps the client participate in the torrent. The base URL consists of the "announce URL" as defined in the metainfo (.torrent) file. The parameters are then added to this URL, using standard CGI methods (i.e. a '?' after the announce URL, followed by 'param=value' sequences separated by '&').
As mentioned above, the list of peers is length 50 by default. If there are fewer peers in the torrent, then the list will be smaller. Otherwise, the tracker randomly selects peers to include in the response. The tracker may choose to implement a more intelligent mechanism for peer selection when responding to a request. For instance, reporting seeds to other seeders could be avoided.
Implementer's Note: Even 30 peers is plenty, the official client version 3 in fact only actively forms new connections if it has less than 30 peers and will refuse connections if it has 55. This value is important to performance. When a new piece has completed download, HAVE messages (see below) will need to be sent to most active peers. As a result the cost of broadcast traffic grows in direct proportion to the number of peers. Above 25, new peers are highly unlikely to increase download speed. UI designers are strongly advised to make this obscure and hard to change as it is very rare to be useful to do so.
By convention most trackers support another form of request, which queries the state of a given torrent (or all torrents) that the tracker is managing. This is referred to as the "scrape page" because it automates the otherwise tedious process of "screen scraping" the tracker's stats page.
The scrape URL may be supplemented by the optional parameter info_hash, a 20-byte value as described above. This restricts the tracker's report to that particular torrent. Otherwise stats for all torrents that the tracker is managing are returned. Software authors are strongly encouraged to use the info_hash parameter when at all possible, to reduce the load and bandwidth of the tracker.
A block is downloaded by the client when the client is interested in a peer, and that peer is not choking the client. A block is uploaded by a client when the client is not choking a peer, and that peer is interested in the client.
It is important for the client to keep its peers informed as to whether or not it is interested in them. This state information should be kept up-to-date with each peer even when the client is choked. This will allow peers to know if the client will begin downloading when it is unchoked (and vice-versa).
The initiator of a connection is expected to transmit their handshake immediately. The recipient may wait for the initiator's handshake, if it is capable of serving multiple torrents simultaneously (torrents are uniquely identified by their infohash). However, the recipient must respond as soon as it sees the info_hash part of the handshake (the peer id will presumably be sent after the recipient sends its own handshake). The tracker's NAT-checking feature does not send the peer_id field of the handshake.
Implementer's Note: That is the strict definition, in reality some games may be played. In particular because peers are extremely unlikely to download pieces that they already have, a peer may choose not to advertise having a piece to a peer that already has that piece. At a minimum "HAVE suppression" will result in a 50% reduction in the number of HAVE messages, this translates to around a 25-35% reduction in protocol overhead. At the same time, it may be worthwhile to send a HAVE message to a peer that has that piece already since it will be useful in determining which piece is rare.
The bitfield message is variable length, where X is the length of the bitfield. The payload is a bitfield representing the pieces that have been successfully downloaded. The high bit in the first byte corresponds to piece index 0. Bits that are cleared indicated a missing piece, and set bits indicate a valid and available piece. Spare bits at the end are set to zero.
View #1According to the official specification, "All current implementations use 2^15 (32KB), and close connections which request an amount greater than 2^17 (128KB)." As early as version 3 or 2004, this behavior was changed to use 2^14 (16KB) blocks. As of version 4.0 or mid-2005, the mainline disconnected on requests larger than 2^14 (16KB); and some clients have followed suit. Note that block requests are smaller than pieces (>=2^18 bytes), so multiple requests will be needed to download a whole piece.
View #1In general peers are advised to keep a few unfullfilled requests on each connection. This is done because otherwise a full round trip is required from the download of one block to begining the download of a new block (round trip between PIECE message and next REQUEST message). On links with high BDP (bandwidth-delay-product, high latency or high bandwidth), this can result in a substantial performance loss.
The super-seed feature in S-5.5 and on is a new seeding algorithm designed to help a torrent initiator with limited bandwidth "pump up" a large torrent, reducing the amount of data it needs to upload in order to spawn new seeds in the torrent.
When a seeding client enters "super-seed mode", it will not act as a standard seed, but masquerades as a normal client with no data. As clients connect, it will then inform them that it received a piece -- a piece that was never sent, or if all pieces were already sent, is very rare. This will induce the client to attempt to download only that piece.
When the client has finished downloading the piece, the seed will not inform it of any other pieces until it has seen the piece it had sent previously present on at least one other client. Until then, the client will not have access to any of the other pieces of the seed, and therefore will not waste the seed's bandwidth.
This method has resulted in much higher seeding efficiencies, by both inducing peers into taking only the rarest data, reducing the amount of redundant data sent, and limiting the amount of data sent to peers which do not contribute to the swarm. Prior to this, a seed might have to upload 150% to 200% of the total size of a torrent before other clients became seeds. However, a large torrent seeded with a single client running in super-seed mode was able to do so after only uploading 105% of the data. This is 150-200% more efficient than when using a standard seed.
Super-seed mode is 'NOT recommended for general use. While it does assist in the wider distribution of rare data, because it limits the selection of pieces a client can downlad, it also limits the ability of those clients to download data for pieces they have already partially retrieved. Therefore, super-seed mode is only recommended for initial seeding servers.
A better strategy is to download pieces in rarest first order. The client can determine this by keeping the initial bitfield from each peer, and updating it with every have message. Then, the client can download the pieces that appear least frequently in these peer bitfields. Note that any Rarest First strategy should include randomization among at least several of the least common pieces, as having many clients all attempting to jump on the same "least common" piece would be counter productive.
When a download is almost complete, there's a tendency for the last few blocks to trickle in slowly. To speed this up, the client sends requests for all of its missing blocks to all of its peers. To keep this from becoming horribly inefficient, the client also sends a cancel to everyone else every time a block arrives.
When to enter end game mode is an area of discussion. Some clients enter end game when all pieces have been requested. Others wait until the number of blocks left is lower than the number of blocks in transit, and no more than 20. There seems to be agreement that it's a good idea to keep the number of pending blocks low (1 or 2 blocks) to minimize the overhead, and if you randomize the blocks requested, there's a lower chance of downloading duplicates. More on the protocol overhead can be found here: -00000156/en.
Choking is done for several reasons. TCP congestion control behaves very poorly when sending over many connections at once. Also, choking lets each peer use a tit-for-tat-ish algorithm to ensure that they get a consistent download rate.
There are several criteria a good choking algorithm should meet. It should cap the number of simultaneous uploads for good TCP performance. It should avoid choking and unchoking quickly, known as 'fibrillation'. It should reciprocate to peers who let it download. Finally, it should try out unused connections once in a while to find out if they might be better than the currently used ones, known as optimistic unchoking.