Re: [vox-tech] bittorrent

["Samuel N. Merritt" <spam@andcheesMAPSe.org>]

On Thu, Dec 04, 2003 at 02:46:25PM -0800, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> On Thu 04 Dec 03,  2:17 PM, Jeff Newmiller <jdnewmil@dcn.davis.ca.us> said:
> > On Thu, 4 Dec 2003, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> > 
> > > ok, i've downloaded bittorrent on debian/sarge.  now what?
> > > 
> > > i've read some material, and here's what i think i know:
> > > 
> > > 1. to get the best download speeds, i'll need to poke holes in
> > >    tcp/6881 through tcp/6889.
> > 
> > I only poke one hole at 6881, because I only do one file at a time.  If
> > you want to be able to do more simultaneous downlads, then poke more
> > holes.  In my case, the download usually sucks up most of my bandwidth, so
> > running more than one instance at a time doesn't really make much sense.
>  
> i'm on symmetric cable, and it's a bit faster than what i was used to
> with DSL.  i plan on doing only one file too, but i think it'd make
> sense for me to have a couple of ports open so multiple people can
> request chunks from me.

You only need one port open per instance of BT. The way TCP works, a
connection is identified by the remote IP, remote port, local IP, and
local port (IIRC). You can have multiple connections with the same local
port; it's the whole tuple that has to be unique. 

Think of SSH sessions; sshd only listens on port 22, but you can still
have multiple SSH connections to the server going simultaneously, even
from the same client machine. 
 
> > > does anyone have a bittorrent testfile handy to download some very small
> > > text file in a 'Hello World' fashion?
> > 
> > Seems not much point to this, since BT can take 5 or 10 MB to get into the
> > swing of things.  If you really want to download a small file,
> > www.toriyamaworld.com regularly distributes translated manga scans (2-6MB)
> > using BT.
> 
> i just wanted to see it in action.  i had no desire to download a DVD or
> 2GB games.
> 
> but i see what you mean.  very interesting -- it downloaded, but the bt
> app is still alive, and it appears to be uploading.   that's kind of
> neat: post mortem uploads.  :)

Yep. Some places consider it good etiquette to let the client just keep
running until it has uploaded at least as much as it has downloaded. 
 
> > c) You can stop and restart your download at will. (Restarting is exactly
> > the same as starting.) BT will automatically pick up where it left off.  
> > Corollary: you can start a BT download on a file you already have
> > completed if you want to help upload... this is known as seeding.
> 
> awesome.  by the time my 3MB download was finished, i uploaded 0MB.
> 
> as i write this, i've already uploaded 7.3 MB.
> 
> i wish there was a setting to throttle the bandwidth.

There is. I think it's --max-upload-rate=N, where N is in KB/s. Run the
program with no args to get a parameter list. 
 
-- 
Samuel Merritt
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