Ge64 Wrote:even if it doesn't happen often to you, which is great, these things do cause direct downloads to fail but the do not cause torrents to fail, so torrents still have the advantage. as far as I know, torrents can't really 'fail' to the extent that you have to start over from scratch with downloading (like direct downloads, even with some resume capable managers in my experience), they just fail to complete if there are no seeds. but that is a completely different story, i don't consider it 'failing'.
Yeah, it's true that torrent can't really fail completely. The worse that can happen is all details of the download getting completely lost, then u can still reload the torrent, point it to ur half downloaded file, it'll do a check, and continue. One of the truely wonderful things about torrent.
But if u use a good download manager, u also have some kind of fail resistance with direct downloads. Althought still not as fail resistent as torrents.
Ge64 Wrote:nah, ive never had anything fake on torrents... i used to get a lot of fake stuff on kazaa etc though but not on torrents :/ also, to prevent this, almost all torrent sites allow people to post comments so you can immediately see if something is not working or not what it says.
Yeah, although sometimes it can be missleading. It's surprising how many people don't know how to mount a MDF/MDS file, and say it's bad, or something stupid like that.
Ge64 Wrote:so then ur line is maxed :P lol. also, well, the odds of your torrent being popular enough are big because otherwise you wouldnt download it yourself either. if u really like strange things then theres nothing i can do about it :P
It's more the stange things. :P
My line is not maxed, but i find ways of maxing it, like downloading many torrents at the same time. so it doesn't matter that much.
Ge64 Wrote:Which program are you using?if torrents don't go higher than 20-30kB/s then you havent configured your router properly. direct does have the advantage here because it is already properly configured/requires no configuring... but if you can't configure your network.. well... you don't get to enjoy torrents :P
I can configure my network. The problem is not not being able to configure the network, the problem is having like being connected to like only 2 people, 1 of whom doesn't send u anything.
Ge64 Wrote:meh, sometimes archives won't open if theyre incomplete because they are corrupted. but you do have a point though..
however...
Winrar almost never extracts stuff from incomplete archives, and only extracts something if the whole thing can be extracted without error. But the 7zip file mamager extracts pretty much everything out of the archive when it's possible, even if what's extracted is only partial, or corrupted, or whatever, as long as u have beginning of the file.
So often, while downloading something, i make a copy of the partially downloaded archive, and extract some partially complete imgage/video out of it, and then see if it's all right. With torrents u can't really do that. But that's not too important anyways.
Ge64 Wrote:with torrents, in the case that the torrent is not archived and the direct download is, you can chose certain files to have higher priority than others (or omit certain files), but with direct downloads you have to download the whole thing first.
If the direct download is not archived, u can choose which files to download. So in the end, it's pretty much the same.
Ge64 Wrote:huh what? 1. if you're using your browser to download, then torrents definately have a bigger advantage because browser's download managers lack many functions torrent software has. or, 2. if you're using a download manager, you're running a program in the background as well so it doesn't really make sense....
Yeah, u got a point there.
All small HTTP stuff i download with browser. Large stuff with flashget.
Ge64 Wrote:true, however you do exaggerate the configuring of the software itself imo. good torrent programs install themselves and associate with .torrent files, and work out of the box and are easy to set up. there is no need for them to integrate into the browser at all (unlike download managers), because the browser opens .torrent files automatically after downloading them (at least after you tell it to once it will), and the torrent program will open up.
about the network/router part, yeah it needs some configuring but its worth it, and if you don't know how... well... sorry... theres entire sites dedicated to providing step by step instructions for doing that, if you still can't do it then well, no torrents for you.
Oh, it's easy for me to configure everything, but that's cause i have a decent amount of knowledge about computers and stuff. For some beginners though, it would be very hard.
I'm using utorrent, and that pretty much guides u thro the setup, but u still need to configure some settings, like tell it how fast ur internet is, and stuff like that. I know a rediculous amount of people who don't know how fast their internet is, or think it's 100mbit/s because that's what right clicking on the icon and reading the LAN properties gives them.
And there's always the problem of configuring firewall/router and I've heard that some ISP providers are really gay, and just block out some commonly used ports completely.
And at most public locations, torrent
will be blocked. That's a big problem for me, who leech most of my poo poo by sticking my usb into the back of a library computer, and letting flashget run in the background. And then go and do something else, and come and get the USB later :P.
Ge64 Wrote:don't forget winrar has a function to archive every file into a seperate archive (and also to unpack a selection of archives in one click to different folders (or the same folder)), so with torrents, you can have the best of both (smaller files, but still being able to select which particular roms you want).
This is irellevant, but with roms, almost noone uses winrar. (atleast right now. back then, everyone used winrar) Lower compression rates than 7zip, and doesn't handle the multiple copies of very similar data as well as 7zip, which is something 7zip does VERY well. And the problem of not being able to compress stuff into seperate archives is solved by using a tool called goodmerge, a command line tool to 7zip an entire romset seperating every different game (all the roms of that game) into a seperate archive, leaving u with an archive for each seperate bunch of similar roms.
Ge64 Wrote:i do the opposite, before i copy stuff to my storage partition i unpack it. because when i use something, i don't want to go unpacking it (or finding out i can't because i don't have the disk space at that moment). it may take up space, but id rather throw out stuff i really don't use now and then than have to unpack everything when i need something.
I generally leave all the stuff I'm not going to touch in a while compressed, like all my CD images and stuff. When i need it, i extract and use. Ofcourse, stuff i use all the time i leave unpacked.
And about having disk space problems, i don't know how leaving everything unpacked helps u in that. unless if u mean by dumping everything ur not going to use. Well, i just can't seem to be able to dump anything. I just compress the stuff i won't need, and maybe burn them onto DVD.
Ge64 Wrote:again, either you don't know where to search for certain stuff or you like really strange stuff. but even for really strange stuff, theres lots of private trackers. not everything is listed on the large sites, you know...
There are private trackers to get stuff like romsets from, but since my connection is not fast anyways. Slow speeds don't matter that much. just download multiple things at the same time.
But some stuff is just hard to find. Like recently, i was looking for the novels of the warcraft game. can't find it anywhere. And i imagine that if i did, it's be dead/almost dead anyways.
Some stuff in private trackers seems to be mirrored onto public trackers. So if i can't connect to the private one, all the mirrored ones will still work.
Another reason i use eMule, even though the ed2k system IMO is inferrior, and i absolutely HATE it's queue system. i use it cause ed2k is heaps popular in asia, and i can eaisly find asian stuff there.
Ge64 Wrote:True, but i havent really found it a problem at all because, if your download speed is 8 times as much as your upload speed, well i guess you use private trackers for 1/8th (in GB) of the total of what you download, so in the end, if you keep seeding those torrents that require seeding, even when ur not downloading, it should break even pretty quickly. i don't have any problems with this at all somehow. when i don't need anything from a private tracker, i upload anyway so that i have some reserve for when i need something again. ive got a ratio of more than 2 on every private tracker that has ratio restrictions, so imho its not really much of an issue.
My seeding speed is 64kbit/s basically download speed. And u cannot seed at max speed, cause that slows ur download speeds, cause all ur requests and all that gets chocked, and takes longer to get out. So u kinda see why I'm rather reluctant to seed to a high ratio with large files. Even if i permanently seed at max speed without slowing my download, which is what I'm doing right now, i cannot hope to acheive a seed ratio of 1. And some private trackers need 1.5 or 2. Ofcourse, not everything u download will be from a private tracker, so selective seeding may work.
Ge64 Wrote:also, just be nice and contribute :P if you don't want to upload, torrent is not for u.
I only really bother seeding for the files that are not very popular. I never seed for files that already have like 200 seeds. But since a lot of what i download is not very popular, like less than 10 seeds, so pretty much I'm always seeding. And that's assuming my upload can keep up. If it can't keep up, then i just move on.
Ge64 Wrote:not only untrue, but ppl who take the time to get into a private tracker usually care to upload WAAAY more often than on anonymous public trackers where there are many leechers. also, people with 100mbps uploads are found on the private trackers because that's where they get credit for uploading.
I never really used a private trackers, so i made that comment on speculation :P.
And what is the credit for? downloading more stuff?
Ge64 Wrote:sometimes, but i mean with torrents you can't be limited or restricted because many servers do require payment for optimal download speeds etc. and all because its not cooperative like torrent, where the upload bandwidth is free. servers do cost money, and sometimes ur lucky but sometimes you arent and you need to pay.
I don't find that too much of a problem. Maybe cause my internet is not fast enough. But the limited speed suffices pretty well. As for the library, their speed is very fast, so i just set many direct downloads from different servers. Like i do with torrents. If 1 doesn't hit the speed, use more. lol. Althought if u really want a large file quickly, then u'll have to think of other ways.
Torrents just have different kinds of restrictions. Instead of download speed, it has stuff like seed ratio for private trackers.
Ge64 Wrote:they do get pruned.... sometimes
but if they were to become that unpopular, then the torrent equivalent would be dead too. So same thing. While if it's just mildly unpopular, it's all fine, while the torrent will still have trouble.
Ge64 Wrote:my client happens to give a lot of detailed info regarding that. of a 2690MB file i downloaded today, 28.4MB was wasted due to 9 pieces failing to download. not only is that just a bit more than 1% rather than 5%, it also indicated that torrents are really reliable because they hash check every piece before they write it to your file, which HTTP/FTP does not. at best, it checks the entire file after it finishes.
How much is wasted depends on ur speed. When ur speed is poo poo, the more likely that u get choked or whatever and stuff gets lost, or partial stuff needs to be thrown away. It;s generally when a lot of people are connected to u, too much than u can handle, when stuff gets wasted. When they all try to send u stuff at the same time. That threshold of how much people u can handle is obviously larger when ur connection is faster. So yeah, for the almost dead torrents, i almost get no waste. normally, like 1-2%, while for the torrents where I'm connectd to like 50 people, the waste is around 5% or higher.
Which kinda also highlights the importance to configure ur torrent propperly. If someone on dialup doesn't set a max cap, and lets 300 people connect to him at the same time, he'll get nothing done.
Another source of waste is people sending u corrupted/bad stuff. But most clients have auto-ban functions these days to ban people when they repeatedly send u bad stuff, so u shouldn't get too much waste from that.
Ge64 Wrote:also, when the torrent file is made you can specify the piece size (bigger is faster, but more wasted space when one fails, smaller is slower but less wasted space). there is also a function for selecting the optimal piece size for the files in your torrent.
Like choosing the best size for ur raid0 array. :mdr:
Ge64 Wrote:by the way, im not trying to argue with anyone or anything (as always), just trying to explain that in my view torrents are much better for most large file downloads.
Depends still. on factors such as how nicely the files are partitioned on direct downloads, what kinds of files, 1 large file, or lots of seperate small files, how popular are the files, what's ur internet speed... IMO way too many factors to make such a generalization.