ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:That could partly be due to your downloader.
Use something like FlashGet to download direct files - much more reliable.
I've seen this happen multiple times with torrent: you get to like 99.5%, then the download halts, as no-one has that last chunk...  Also, if the seeders/leechers disappear...

if that happens, then you couldve seen that there was only 1 or 2 seeders or even 0 seeders when you started the torrent. seeders/peers don't 'disappear', they do decrease but it there are 5+ seeders for a torrent then you will be able to finish it (also depends on how new it is. if its a new torrent then it will have 1 seeder but there will be more later on)

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:As for the torrents, theoretically the more leechers, the faster it goes, but in practice, I find it otherwise.  Most people (on public trackers at least) use either ratio fakers, or upload limiters so they typically only upload at 1KB/sec, but download a lot faster.  The end result is that they leech more than they download, so having more leechers actually slows down the torrent. Plus, at different times of the day, there'll still be different people seeding/leeching etc.

in general, if there are about 50 seeders and 300 peers, then your line will be maxed without a problem. there are way more people than you think that actually DO upload while downloading, most users don't even care about changing those settings because the upload speed doesn't affect the download speed (more below by the way) in a negative way.

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:Right-click » Flashgot » Download All, filter to *.avi (or whatever).  Done.

apart from the fact that you would be downloading 200 files at once which is usually impossible, that still leaves you with redownloading the failed ones and managing 200 downloads rather than 1.

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:You should always keep a decent amount of free HDD space, even if it's just for paging file purposes.

heh, i have my paging file on its own partition. same for my downloads. no need for free space...

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:Maybe all the stuff I search for isn't popular then...

maybe you just don't know where to search?

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:Private trackers tend to have better speed, plus better content at times.
Newsgroups are a way better source, but require membership fees.
As for Megaupload etc, I do believe there's ways of bypassing those limits.

so still torrents are better off, because they are totally free and don't require any kind of bypassing or other annoying stuff

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:My comparison:
At the library: Direct download (usually) = 160 - 1500KB/sec (some FTP servers with parallel connections)
Torrent = 1 - 70 KB/sec.
The fastest speed I've heard from torrents is around 400KB/sec

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ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:I don't care about uploaders :P

did you know that the bittorrent system is made so that peers upload more to the peers that upload to them as well? so if your speeds are chocolatety even though the torrent is healthy, its probably because you arent uploading. if you let it upload for a while, eventually the peers that are downloading from you will give you priority to download from them as well. that's also why torrents need time to 'get started'.