Member Avatar for Nikhar

Hey...guys while downloading one of the files I got a whopping 100 seeds.... and a sucking 20kbps download speed! I am very new to the world of torrents...in fact only began yesterday. So, I do not have much idea about torrents. I have a few questions. Firstly, the rate at which a file is downloaded, does it depend on the number of seeds AND my net speed or only on the number of seeds? I have the internet speed of 256kbps. So, is the 100 seeds and 20-25kbps d/w speed normal?

Well, i dared to make the assumption that it isn't. So, I looked for a few tweaks.... like port forwarding, multiple trackers etc. etc. But nothing seems to work. Please help.

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Good follow-up that builds on , and — here are a few deeper points and a short troubleshooting checklist that explain why "many seeds but low speed" can happen and what to try next.

BitTorrent transfers are shaped by piece availability and peer selection, not just seed count. Seeds spread upload across many peers, clients use tit‑for‑tat/optimistic unchoke and rarest‑first piece selection, and NAT/firewalls or connection overhead on very small links can prevent efficient use of every available seed. That means a swarm with lots of seeds can still deliver modest speed if peers don’t have the pieces needed, if incoming connections are blocked, or if the client is wasting bandwidth on dozens of tiny TCP connections.

Recommended checks (quick, practical):

  • Verify baseline ISP bandwidth with an independent speed test so the client’s top speed can be compared to real network throughput.
  • Inspect the torrent’s health: look at connected peers, availability (how many full copies), and active connections rather than raw seed count.
  • Confirm the client is reachable: set a fixed LAN IP and either forward the chosen listening port in the router or enable UPnP, then check the client’s “port open/listening” indicator.
  • Tune the client for small links: cap upload to ~70–80% of the true upstream, reduce global/peers‑per‑torrent counts (keep connections low to reduce protocol overhead), and limit upload slots to 2–4.
  • Enable DHT/PEX and protocol encryption (obfuscation) to find more peers and, in some cases, avoid ISP DPI shaping. If throttling is suspected, try a VPN as a test (VPNs add overhead and are a tradeoff).

If these steps still don’t lift speeds, the bottleneck is usually ISP throttling, a poorly seeded swarm (low availability), or local network congestion. This advice complements ’s and ’s notes on upload limits and ’s point that seed numbers alone aren’t a guarantee of fast transfers.

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Member Avatar for Roshkj

First answering you questions.
"Firstly, the rate at which a file is downloaded, does it depend on the number of seeds AND my net speed or only on the number of seeds?"

In torrent, seed means a person who have the complete part of the file and uploading it for others to bear fruit ( later that fruit can also became a seed). so increasing the number of seeds definitely help you to have more speed. But if you can't accept too many resources at one time, you can't accept it. but slowly accepting is possible.

so in short number of seeds and your net work is having a great impact on rate of download for a torrent file.......

"I have the internet speed of 256kbps. So, is the 100 seeds and 20-25kbps d/w speed normal?"

dear friend, your speed is 256 kbps. that means 256 kilo bits per second.
but in downloading it is showing 20KB/s. that means 20 kilo bytes per second.
1 byte = 8 bits
so
256 kilo bit = 256kilo bit/8 = 32 kilo byte
so your getting 20 KB means that is normal.
also in torrent while you are downloading, you are uploading also. so if your torrent client is not supporting full band width download and upload, some percentage of band width will be alloted for upload from download band width. ( the band width required for upload can be adjusted)

Hope that this answers your question.

Member Avatar for rubberman

Roshki made some good points. As for controlling your bandwidth usage, most torrent clients have the ability to limit the number of uplinks that you will provide, reducing upload overhead by some factor. The entire idea of bittorrents is to distribute the load and bandwidth needed by many downloaders trying to get the same file, so as your system downloads chunks of the file, those become available for others to get from you. Since your upload speed is usually smaller than your download speed, too many connections will cause some congestion, hence the ability of most tools to limit this. However, bear in mind that if you limit upload access too severely, your download connections will become lesser as this balancing (the more you give, the more you get) is part of the bittorrent algorithm.

Member Avatar for orwell84

I would just like to add that 100 seeds is not necessarily "whopping" -- ubuntu desktop 11.04 currently has 600 and counting. Also, remember that those hundred(s) of seeds are uploading to all clients. Even if you're connected to 100 seeds, they're not necessarily all giving you their full upload bandwidth.

Edited by orwell84 because: n/a
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