parentheses in torrents?

November 27, 2006 11:14 PM

when downloading a torrent, what are the numbers in the parentheses?
posted by tristanshout to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

If you're asking what I think you're asking, it's the number of available peers. The number before the parentheses are the number of peers to which you're currently connected.
posted by null terminated at 11:17 PM on November 27, 2006

*is
posted by null terminated at 11:18 PM on November 27, 2006

Usually, the number of seeders and the number of leechers (abbreviated as S/L). Seeders are the people attached to the torrent who have the complete file (or files). Leechers are people who do not have the complete file. Leechers are both downloading the file and also providing to others the portions of the file that they have already downloaded.

Depending on your client, it may also show the number of seeders & leechers as a total, and also the number you are currently connected to. For instance, in Azureus you may see 5(150). This means there are 150 seeders, 5 of which you are currently connected to.
posted by stovenator at 11:21 PM on November 27, 2006

to make sense of all that:

Torrent File Name (Seeders) (Leechers)

You want the ratio of Seeders to Leachers to be as big as possible:

100:1 is Unbelievable
100:70 is OK
100:100 is Fair
50:100 is Not that great
1:100 is Bad


The Seeders are the people who have the whole copy of the file and are uploading. So the more of them there are, the better the torrent is.

A ratio like:

30:100

is probably better (faster) than:

10:10

even though the ratio is better on 10:10, there are still not very many seeders.

you will get a feel with experience what is good.
posted by farmersckn at 1:21 AM on November 28, 2006

Golly, depending on the site and the client, lots of numbers might be in parentheses in lots of places. If you're asking about red numbers in parentheses next to people's usernames on a peer list, like this:

TorrentUser20 (6881)
Sparkypup (15543)

then that's the user's port number, and it means the user is firewalled or otherwise not accepting incoming connections.
posted by FelliniBlank at 4:59 AM on November 28, 2006

Aside: I don't like the way that the quality of a torrent is represented only in number of seeders and leechers. What I'd like to see is the percentage that the average provider has downloaded. A torrent with 100 seeders and 20 just-started feeders isn't going to be as responsive as one with 20 seeders and 100 feeders with most of the file. Since you have complete torrents with no seeders at all (as long as someone has each segment), maybe seeing "percent of file shared" on unseeded files would be good, too.
posted by Plutor at 5:01 AM on November 28, 2006

In Azereus one of the possible columns is quantity of copies available in connected peers. It's not as close to what you want as a quantity available in ALL peers, Plutor, but I don't think that's part of the client-tracker communication so there's no way for the client to know it.
posted by phearlez at 10:25 AM on November 28, 2006