Check the Available Number of Seeds and Peers

Check Seeds and Peers

An effective gauge, but often overlooked.

People always complain:
“I cannot get high speeds and I’ve done everything you advised me to do. Why is it so?”

The first thing I would ask is:
“How many seed and peers are you connected to?”

And he would answer:
“I’m not so certain. Let me check.”
*Couple of minutes later*
“Oh… 1 seed and 25 peers.”

Of course your speed is not good! Just look at your seed:peer ratio! It is horrible!

Wait a minute. What is a peer?

A peer is another computer on the internet that is sharing the file you wish to download. Typically a peer does not have the complete file; if it did it would be called a seed. Peers are also called leeches, to distinguish them from those who have completed their download and continue to leave their BitTorrent Client running and act as a seed.

Ok. So what is a seed?

Well, a seed is a user that has a complete copy of the specific torrent you are downloading. Once your client finishes downloading, it will remain open until you stop it. This is known as seeding.

You can also start a BitTorrent Client with a complete file, and once BitTorrent has checked the file, it will connect and seed the file to others.

It is good to continue seeding a file after you have finished downloading, to help others download faster.

Also, when a new torrent is posted to a tracker, someone must seed it in order for it to be available to others.

From the above case, it is likely that my friend must have just download a torrent that is just posted on a tracker, since the number of seeders is 1.

A rule of thumb is to always check the torrent’s current seeds and peers. The more seeds (compared to peers) the better.

Hence, a torrent with 50 seeds and 50 peers (1:1) is better than 50 seeds with 100 peers (1:2).