Forum Overview
::
Rants
::
More thoughts on BitTorrent
[quote name="Fussbett"][quote name="Zseni: Warrior-Poet"][quote name="Fussbett"][quote name="Fussbett"]So instead of 70 snatches and 14 peers (worst thing ever) they would prefer 40 snatches and 30 peers?[/quote] That should read "So instead of 70 snatches and 14 SEEDS (worst thing ever) they would prefer 40 snatches and 30 SEEDS?"[/quote] While I understand your feral rage, I do think the insane system you're describing has at least one beneficial side effect: torrents last longer.[/quote] They last longer only by the period enforced by the delay, though, which is 72 hours at most in Nazi Germanic places like audiofarm, and sometimes slap-on-the-wrist 12 hours. It does nothing for your 20-week-old torrent. The 20-week-old torrent is BT's weakness as a swarming protocol, and it's why eJackasses still exist, to fill that gap. The only way around old torrents is to have the thriving community where you can rely on communication and reseeds, as you mentioned. That's purely extracurricular icing on the cake and shouldn't be an expectation of BT. It's also only viable in the MP3 world, as in certain communities it's impractical to reseed old torrents, like in the case with 3 gig RARed ISOs or current TV shows. No one's keeping around RARs or episode 4 of Joey for archival purposes. [quote]No-penalty systems have torrents that may only last a day or two, penalty systems are more likely to have older torrents still seeded. I don't know, chief. It's great to be on a fast torrent, but also great to find what you're looking for some time after it has been posted.[/quote] I say you're asking BT to be something it's not, stretching it out unnaturally. I say play to the strengths rather than fight the tide like so much King Canute and/or salmon. The strengths are the speeds given by more peers, ease of use, and the stability of distributed copies and hash checking. So a site should do everything to get as many peers as possible, all the time, by removing obstructions. If this is happening, other problems are less promblematic as more people get the file faster, thus SEED EARLIER AND MAYBE LONGER (a hidden benefit no one thinks of), not to mention the chance of the first distributed copy appearing earlier, making seeds even less important. The file may have a short seed life (relative only to artificial life support seeds), but the file could be uploaded again later, couldn't it? After all, the maximum number of people snatched the file in the first place, so it got out there. SuprNova was a good example of this, things appearing multiple times. No one complained. Sites discourage peers both through mandates and by accident. There was a site I registered for to get the Brown Bunny. It was a site specializing in art films and music. E-mail registration of course, lots to read, everything to slow me down -- including banning ports 6881-6889 (psh, <i>common</i> ports). Finally I got to the torrents and see 1 seed and 1 leecher on the 2-day-old Brown Bunny. Why doesn't the seed just e-mail the file instead?[/quote]