P.S. Greed is never an explanation, because everyone is greedy. Saying that someone does so-and-so because he is greedy is like saying he does it because he breathes air.

(1) the old model of home Internet usage (circa 1995) was that, ON AVERAGE, 20% of all subscribers would be online at any given time, and then, maybe 25-30% of those would actually be downloading something (usually simple HTML/JavaScript pages, lo-fi Real Player media was big back then, some FTP, etc.), and

(2) The broadband providers use this law of averages to their advantage to OVERSELL their stated bandwidth capacity such that (based on the old model) the 25-30% active downloaders of the 20% of the subscribers online were getting the advertised download speed only for the duration of the download.

So, for example, the ISP which gives 5Mbit down and 256kbit up, the 5-6% of active downloaders (25-30% x 20%) lower the AVERAGE download bandwidth per user to about 256kbit for the whole system. (5Mbit * 5-6% = 250-300kbit).

That, and Nathan (reply 1) said, to dissuade residential subscribers from running HTTP/FTP servers, etc.

That’s a little misleading. The “speed” of the swarm is defined as the combined upload speed, so what you say here is true by definition. However, during the initial seeding, the speed of the swarm will max out on the speed of the seeder(s). You can have 300 people with 1Mbit upstream connections, but if the seeder has their upload capped at 5KB/sec, that’s the real max speed until the seed is done.

What you say here is reasonable – it’s a good idea to get people to uncap their upload bandwidth, since it helps everyone. But, the title of your article may be a little misleading to some people. Increasing my upload speed doesn’t affect *my* download speed significantly – it just helps others.

This means that potentially the seeder has the entire file, leecher #1 has the first third, leecher #2 the second and leecher #3 has the third and final piece. There is now a total of 2 copies in the cloud. This means that, hypothetically, you could download at 2x the upload speed of the seeder. This effect gains strength only if seeders are able to further spread the pieces they’ve downloaded, so that you could hypothetically have many times more the upload speed of the initial seeder.

That’s why you really need to upload while you download, because if you don’t there won’t be anyone else getting getting the parts they need to share to others.

I’m able to download at 16,000 KB and upload at 2,100 KB

This ISP currently offers ADSL2+ M

http://www.internode.on.net/

uploading was really only done to send requests for information, never really to upload information as we do now.

the speed asymmetry reflects the slowness of the USA broadband systems to sadapting to the “new internet”, where uploading has become a pretty big deal.

in short- uploading is more important now than ever. today’s speed packages are not designed with this in mind.

expect to see faster upload speeds advertised by broadband companies soon. i think dsl already pushes this, but not enough. im on cable and get 1,000KB/s down and only 40KB/s up.

Honestly, the state of things will not change in the United States until new technologies like WiMax are available that will give cable ISPs a run for their money.