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Comment by zinekeller | Hacker News Reader

I'll add 3. connections tend to be symmetric, and even guaranteed for fixed connections (well technically mobile internet are asymmetric by design, but it doesn't matter much because uplink is still reasonably fast) and 4. government-mandated peerings, before 2017 it'll be simply impossible because Telecom and Unicom (not sure about Mobile) don't have good peering back then with each other.

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Where I live in the US we have ADSL and to make peer-to-peer viable at all I have to put an upload cap on, otherwise the uplink gets saturated and downloads start having problems because the ACK packets get delayed or lost.

It drives me absolutely up the wall that some torrent networks insist that you have a 1-1 ratio because it is close to impossible for me and there is no point because often the network has so many seeds…. The fact that I can complete a transfer uploading just 5% of what I download proves my upload isn’t needed.

> some torrent networks insist that you have a 1-1 ratio

Yeah, it sucks. Ratio economies disproportionately favor users with good links. At the same time, it ignores the truly valuable user contribution which is decentralized redundant storage. Trackers should be trying to maximize the amount of copies available in the swarm, not bandwidth which literally doesn't matter past a certain point. What good is a torrent with zero seeds?

You should look into enabling fq_codel/cake or similar algorithms on your router if you have bufferbloat issues. You can also rent a cheap seedbox with a symmetrical connection if you are having issues seeding. Also in my experience most of the best trackers have a bonus point system that rewards long term seeding over ratio. BTN for example is completely ratioless.

Funnily, all Comcast-provided (look who sponsors bufferbloat.net :P) and majority of Xyzel routers implement CoDel already. It's just that even with CoDel, it just sucks.

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