Private BitTorrent Trackers Face Credit Crunch
Written by Ernesto on March 31, 2009The credit crunch has impacted the global financial market and many businesses are struggling to survive the economic downturn. Now, a rare academic publication on private BitTorrent trackers suggests that the same is happening in private BitTorrent communities.
Statistically, it is simply impossible for all members of a private BitTorrent tracker to maintain an upload/download ratio close to 1. However, even the less strict ratios of 0.4 or less are hard to maintain for newcomers with limited upload speeds, a notion that has now been confirmed scientifically.
Researchers from the Tribler P2P team at the Technical University of Delft, Netherlands, took an in depth look at the ‘ratio economy’ at various private BitTorrent trackers. Interestingly, they found some striking similarities between this virtual economy and some of the recent events in the global financial system.
In the paper, the researchers looked into the BitTorrent share ratios of members of a private TV-torrent tracker. They found that the current ratio system is heavily skewed towards a small group of people with a lot of upload capacity, often armed with seedboxes. These greedy ‘rich peers’ take away a disproportional of the available upload ‘credit’ so that new peers, or poorer ones have trouble keeping their ratio above the required figure.
In addition, several variations of swarm populations were simulated to see what their effect is on the users’ share ratios. Overall, the researchers found evidence of a credit crunch in the current ratio tracking schemes currently employed by most private BitTorrent trackers. Even when everyone has similar bandwidth limits this credit shortage still occurs.
“We discovered a strange phenomenon in existing private BitTorrent communities,” Dr. Johan Pouwelse told TorrentFreak. “Lack of credit is hampering performance. We have been able to reproduce this effect in a simulator to further understand it. It has many similarities with the credit crunch where the greasing oil of the world economy is drying out.”
“Lack of credit makes for bankrupt states and poorly functioning BitTorrent communities,” Pouwelse added. While it is unlikely that the trackers will collapse from it, the paper indeed shows that the current emphasis on share ratios is not fair to all members of the community.
Previously, Bram Cohen, the inventor of the BitTorrent protocol has spoken out against share ratios. “A better approach would be to not count it against people when they download from heavily overseeded torrents. Or to just not use total upload/download ratios at all, or if you do only make them advisory and not a source of banning,” he said at the time.
There are indeed hundreds of alternatives to the current ratio calculation, and most of them will indeed guarantee a healthier sharing environment (less favorable towards ‘rich peers’). In the paper, the researchers show that a ’seeding bonus’ where peers get more credits for their uploads may help and others have suggested to use the total seeding time instead of the upload/download ratio.
While the paper presents some interesting findings, it doesn’t say much about download speeds on private trackers, which tend to be much higher than on public trackers. The parallels with our collapsing financial system are interesting, and with the only difference that a ‘bailout’ or ‘bonus’ would actually help the poor peers on private BitTorrent trackers, we can’t be too sure if that’s also going to work in the real world.
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48 Responses
Interesting!
boring.
yeah, in my country ppl use private trackers because that’s the only way to get content dubbed in my east-european language, luckily I download from TPB, mininova and eztv and smile when I hear about their ratio problems
Down with the ratio! Ratioless trackers ftw! Seedbox users on those sites aren’t greedy but incredibly nice offering their blazing speeds for points instead of an insane ratio lol.
Nice article, thx for sharing it.
ha, I knew this for so long. It’s more than apparent that on most decent private trackers, the people with seedboxes have an unfair advantage.
The notion that you have to stay away from well-seeded torrents until you have built up a ‘buffer’ is simply laughable. When you have a well-seeded torrent, at most, you should have a choice of either seeding back for x amount of hours OR back to 1:1 ratio, but never JUST to 1:1 ratio. I love torrents, but the whole private scene is just disgusting to me (yes, I’ve been there, not very far up the chain, but what I saw firsthand and heard secondhand was more than enough).
Tee hee hee @ posts 1 & 2
Universities in the Netherlands sure do have a lot of important work to do……
Sure it takes a bit of hard work to get your ratio started on a private tracker, but after that it’s essentially a perpetual machine that requires 0 to no maintenance.
Harden up people.
an early april fools. loving the serious responses!
i honestly cannot believe anyone would fall for this one xD
People complaining about seedbox users are ignorant as*holes. Seedbox users are the only reason you get fast speeds on private trackers. If everyone stopped using seedboxes, then everyone would complain that the speeds are to slow. So suck it up, maintaining a ratio is still not difficult on most trackers since they have freeleech and bonus points.
Freeleech is the ’stimulus’ of the private tracker world and it works just fine. If people have a problem with getting and maintaining a ratio when they can download torrents that don’t impact them and seed back, I wonder how they manage to turn on their computers in the first place.
Whoop does not approve. Torrent Freak fails.
Would you like a pie with that?
@12 sheez: The problem is not that peers don’t want to seed back. I experience this on my sites. There are hi-powered seedboxes that sustain multiple Mbits of connections over long periods of time and shove out the files to the peers. Then when you want to start seeding you can’t because everyone’s already got their stuff from one of the hi-powered boxes. I can barely keep my 1:1 ratio up because of the hi-bandwidth connection there is only a very short upload window for me to seed anything at all.
Take a 175MB TV show release. That is transferred at speeds of 2.5MB/s it takes about a minute to transfer. If every peer gets the entire file within a minute … how can someone with a 100KB/s upload connection compete with his 30 minute upload? Impossible.
That’s exactly the effect described in the article.
The real benefit of hard ratio requirements is that it motivates everyone to seed torrents really long – not just for a few hours or days, but for months, or “forever”. This means that even torrents that only a few people are interested in are still well seeded on sites like waffles or bitmetv.
The problem is that bittorrent was intended for transferring a few files to a lot of people very fast, but not as a reliable distributed storage for a huge number of files that are each downloaded only occasionally.
@7 Anon
“Universities in the Netherlands sure do have a lot of important work to do”
Well, they are working on Tribler, it seems.
DIDIDave “Private Tracker H&R script creator”
We dont and have not operated a pure ratio system for some years now.
What we operate is a H&R system which can tell if a user coul dhave seeded to a higher ratio then they have.
If a user stops a torrent with a ratio less then 1:1 they are asked to reseed.If they decide not to do this they get 1 warning with a total of 5 resulting in downloads disabled.
They are only warned if there ratio on that single torrent is less then 1:1 and there were downloaders on the torrent to have been seeding to.
If a torrent has zero downloaders no warning is given.
If they reseed as requested no warning is given unless they again stop with the above condtions still not met.
Even users that get over 5 warnings are not banned but unless they reseed the torrents in question the warnings stay for a max of 14 days and no extra downloads are able to be started.
After 14 days we remove 2 warnings from all accounts.
This means that users dont need to reseed 100% of there torrents of so wwished and does not effect users who have tried to seed but due to the lack of downloaders or the fact tit maybe over seeded and there bandwidth has not been used by the swarm they are not warned.
As torrent users ourself s for many years we have seen that you cant seed every torrent to a 1:1 and should not be expected to get booted off a site or warned for a ratio of less then 1:1 if and when they have done there very best for the site.
We also offer free leech happy hours every day ,where every torrent on site is classed as a free download for the full time it takes to download by the user not just within that happy hour.
This means users with a less then perfect 1:1 site ratio can correct it with ease if so wanted by the user.
Larger torrent Packs and torrents less likly to be wanted by a massive number of users such as Xvid Collection packs , AVCHD HiDef , DVD Multi are all classed as free leech 24/7.
This means people are more likley to take advantage of these larger packs then normal and less people are going to look at them and think no way do i want to seed all that back or kill my ratio if i cant do it.
Just a few of the ways we try to help our own users …
lol
seed to 1.0 unless you are uploader then seed till 3 full copies are out… those are oldest rules there are… if you upkeep them no such thing happens…dat we know
also freeleeches and so on help ALOT to low ratio becoming at least medium
… now from all trackers i have used….wow i got zero who has had these problems,and only one of them has freeleeches, well okay 1 had these problems but it was due to lack of members after several long out of business periods
Freeleech…
So, i download a torrent i dont want so that i can seed it back to other members that dont really want it, just so we can all build up our ratio..
mmmmm…. ’stimulus’
Freeleech…
So, i download a torrent i dont want so that i can seed it back to other members that dont really want it, just so we can all build up our ratio..
mmmmm…. ’stimulus’
So, i download a torrent i dont want so that i can seed it back to other members that dont really want it, just so we can all build up our ratio..
mmmmm…. ’stimulus’
Like i said every torrent on site wil be classed as free leech at least once a day…
As long as it’s started within the happy hour time frame it’s free to these users that started the torrent within happy hour untill they finish downloading it.
This means if a user wanted to they could download anything they wanted ..
Be it the latest movie or mp3 torrents.
The happy hour is random but is shown on site when it’s next to be active on site.
This does stop users just using it as a pure free leech site as they would have to come back at random times each day to get free leech on everything they downloaded.
H&R stats….
Users With 1 Hit&Run Warnings (466)
Users With 2 Hit&Run Warnings (113)
Users With 3 Hit&Run Warnings (39)
Users With 4 Hit&Run Warnings (18)
Users With 5 Hit&Run Warnings (4)
Users With over 5 H&R Warnings (1)
With average userbase these are not bad stats and shows users will and do work within the H&R system rules
Compared to 1757 members with a ratio at less then 50%
These 1757 would be classed as leechers else where and possabley be banned but due to the H&R script it’s prooved they seeded there torrents to the best of there abilities on the torrents they downloaded from the tracker.
Low ratio will be lack of downloaders or over seeded or high speed seeders taking over the seeding swarms.
Look up ratio master and your problem is solved.
Bah that is horse crap anyone even on the worst connection can maintain a ratio it is all a matter of balance. Work within the restrictions of your bandwidth and your fine. If you can’t show restraint maybe it is best you stick will public trackers that have no requirements. Maybe try and find a private tracker that is more tailored to your specific needs as they do exist.
Never had a problem with ratios, even when I was on a shitty 8/1 mbit ADSL.
But that is not the point. The point is private tracker torrenting IS a zero sum game; there is no getting around it, unless rules other than pure ratios are introduced (freeleech, etc). And this is what private tracker admins realized a long time ago – and then they introduced donations. Can’t keep your ratio up? Donate, and you are set – leech mode ahoy!
See where I’m going with this? Bandwidth is the new currency ;))
Very easy to get well above a 1:1 ratio if you can buy 250GB or more upload for $25.
good information
i have my seed box..and its better to have one
I’m on a 1.5/.75mbit line, and I upload ~100GB per month, almost entirely on private trackers. I download about half that.
Anyone blaming their lack of upload on their poor internet speeds needs to shut their mouth, and do the following things:
1. Leave your computer on and bt client running at all times.
2. Seed everything forever as long as you have it on your hard drive.
It really is not hard, folks.
@27: That’s just like saying that George Walker (texas Ranger) Bush did not spy on Americans, or that the US is the best country worldwide. Just,not possible… yet i hope. In any case, are you talking about getting 250 gb upload credit on private trackers.. or an ISP that actually does provide that kinds of speeds? If there’s an ISp that provides that… lol which one?
Im on 10M(1280k) but my uploads are capped at 30k (or 5k at times) yet ive never had a problem hitting 1 as a ratio, I just leave torrents up till I get there. It uses little resources to upload (even using ktorrent that is not known to be lite)
april fools!
I didn’t read all the previous comments, so sorry if I’m repeating points.
On most private sites I’ve been on, there are ways other than straight seeding to bump your ratio. The basic seedbonus is one… seed for X time, get Y bonus gigabytes on your account. Otherwise, there’s the “donate X money, and get Y gigabytes as a thank-you gift” strategy. Or, of course, free-leech torrents, be it on a per-torrent basis or for limited times site-wide.
One thing I don’t like about the comparison to the economy is the fact that you can’t just make more money without affecting everybody. On a torrent site, it’s inconsequential to give users the ability to get more UL stat than they “should”.
”
Previously, Bram Cohen, the inventor of the BitTorrent protocol has spoken out against share ratios. “A better approach would be to not count it against people when they download from heavily overseeded torrents. Or to just not use total upload/download ratios at all, or if you do only make them advisory and not a source of banning,” he said at the time.
”
It’s called freeleech. lol
Private sites might need bailout from biggies like Mininova & TPB
This is why you need to join a good tracker.
Good Tracker:
You need to seed back 1:1 OR 48 hours.
No Hit’n'Runs on freeleech.
Only freeleech on boxset (/ big torrents)
More?
easiest way around high seeder counts: seed a new torrent for a couple months. give it time. your ratio WILL build.
easiest way to seed new torrents thru alternative sources: download a given torrent from a public site such as tpb or mininova and seed it to the private site. note this only works if you keep each torrent seperate. all private sites will ban you if you add the tracker to the same torrent, and most sites don’t mind if you downloaded the files contained in the torrent from an alternative source. they want seeders and could care less about how the seeders got the files. just make sure the torrent you plan on seeding is exactly the same as the torrent on the private site.
and that’s all for nokio’s cool tips. have a good one peoples!
life at tribler? a long time in coming but finally a faint heartbeat is heard
the revelation at tribler is give to get does not work and the proposed ratio based currency is seriously flawed and absolutely inoperable. as Bram said, tit for tat is the currency and the system is in the logistics of swarm scale. once a torrent passes a minimum critical swarm size/speed the general laws of statistics take control of the distribution equation
if i was anti-p2p i would invent the ratio because the ratio works against proliferation of the technology by suppressing filesharing activity and swarm health. anything which limits an honest peer’s ability to enter a swarm is evil
i get the idea the guys at tribler are either n00bs or grew up on private sites. they sure as hell dont know much about the realities of bittorrent. new question for tribler: why is a leecher an enemy of filesharing? answer: he is not, there is zero downside to a leecher
(let us for one moment put aside cheaters. cheaters are not leechers, cheaters are a different topic and we want to discuss pure bittorrent economics before we discuss security)
for the whole duration the leecher is on the network he is also uploading. the larger a swarm is then the lower is the amount of data a leecher must contribute to match what he has taken. in large swarms it may be impossible for the leecher to upload anything to contibute to the swarm health because the swarm does not need another contribution
therefore the hit and run issue applies only to very small swarms and the nominal loss of a hit and run is to the upside option alone. a hit and run takes nothing from the swarm that was not already freely offered and for the duration the leecher is in the swarm he is contributing
theft of bandwidth is an issue and it is necessary for any box system to be properly protected against systemised attacks (but that is a completely different topic than the normal behaviour of the peer in a swarm). it is interesting to note that MediaDefender educated us ALL in how to frustrate an unprotected bittorrent network, congratulations to Universal, Sony and all the media cartel for funding development of systems which will bring down not only our networks but also your own future networks. i guess it is gonna be for you to spend more money to protect yourselves against the technologies which you unleashed. does it all sound so familiar? bittorrent is the direct product of the restrictive practices of an illegal media monopoly, without the excessively high pricing of media content there would have been no need for bittorrent
lesson is: restrictive practices e.g. ratio, monopoly, greed, etc. will result in epic fail
Torrentleech will never have any form of freeleech or points for extensive seeding as its like the Federal Reserve ‘PROFIT PROFIT’
bonuses sure help, ’till the next time
Being an active member of currently ten private trackers, seeding from a DSL connection with 50 kByte/s upload I call horseshit on that article. I have a ratio over 1.0 with a big enough buffer to get anything I need on all of those sites and I’m even only seeding during daytime.
If you don’t fuck up and go on downloading sprees while your new on a tracker those seedboxes won’t have an effect on you, on the contrary, you’ll *love* the constant fast download speeds.
Favourite quote from a forum on one of those trackers: “I bet the author is on ratio watch”. Nuff said.
I hate private trackers with a ratio. The whole concept of having to build up a buffer to download what you want is anathema to the whole concept of free distribution.
With a small pipe you can never compete with a seedbox. It’s even worse when you have a small pipe and you have to share your connection.
I will rarely seed out to 1:1 on a well seeded torrent. I concentrate my bandwidth on underseeded torrents. My rule is if the torrent has 10 or more seeds I remove it from the queue and leave the torrents that have under 10, and seed them out until they get over 10 seeds.
I feel it’s pointless to waste what little bandwidth I have on a large swarm. It’s much better to build up the little swarms.
In the end though when it comes to ratio’s, it’s just more elitist crap. If I want to go on a “downloading spree” whats it to you in the end. If I want to use a ratioed tracker and a non-ratioed, now I’m really screwed because every byte I upload on the non-ratioed isn’t going to be counted?
Everyone has hit and run, it’s pointless getting your panties all in a bunch about it and imposing draconian ratio restrictions that if not met will result in a ban. A quarter of the files I download I watch and delete in a day or two. I don’t have the hard drive space to keep and seed them, and most of them aren’t worth the bandwidth anyway, hence the reason they end up in the digital round file.
In the end it’s all a moot point. Internet 2 is on the way. That will seriously put a damper on p2p, or any other freedom on the internets.
seed bonus must reward a behavior that you want to advocate, so things like giving a small credit for the swarm density for being the first uploaders is good, while no deductions for downloading an over saturated torrent is bad.
It is too bad courts have not recognized that using torrents like a vcr should be legal. If it were private trackers could reward ratios for getting new members (without worrying that new member is an RIAA/MPAA spy).
such a reward system would eliminate over saturated torrents by bring fresh blood into the system to balance it out.
I think maybe they should look at maybe checking a percentage of torrents/data currently seeding vs torrents snatched, rather than the ratio of data transferred. People that contribute back by seeding what they download get rewarded, and leechers get banned. The only issue is that it’s very hard for some people to keep such a limit on certain sites where large files are typically transferred, they might run out of space. They could also reward these higher percentage seeders with exclusive access to new leaks.
@43: A small pipe may be able to maintain the kind of ratio a seedbox is, but it can easily maintain a suitable ratio for any private tracker. Like I said in my earlier post (#30), I have an overall ratio of ~2 across several private trackers, and that is without even trying. And I download ~50 hours of video (good stuff: h264, ac3, etc) per month, so it’s not like I’m foregoing downloads to maintain a ratio.
I agree that it is more important to seed the under-seeded swarms than the well-seeded ones. But I think *the* most important thing is ensuring that you are utilizing as much of your upstream bandwidth as possible. No need to stop seeding a well-seeded torrent if you aren’t going to be putting that bandwidth to use elsewhere. Same thing with hard drive space: don’t delete unless you need the space.
Now, you ARE fully utilizing your bandwidth and you DO need the space, so that’s fine. But most people I know stop seeding a torrent not because they want to use their bandwidth/hard drive for something else. They stop seeding because they think they’ve tried *enough*. I know people with who, even though they have a 50mb/s uplink (college lol), stop seeding as soon as they get the chance, even though they still have the file on their computer and have plenty of spare bandwidth. Or they delete the files even though they have 500GB of free space on their hard drive. It’s as if they find seeding to be a *chore*, something which they must weasel their way out of at all costs.
So while yes, people like you, who do whatever is within their power to seed end up being hurt by ratio systems, those same systems do wonders when it comes to keeping people liked the ones I described in check. And the latter group far outnumbers the former, unfortunately.
Err, “@43: A small pipe may be able”
Should be:
“@43: A small pipe may not be able”
Wow it would have payed to proof read that.
“their bandwidth/hard drive for something else. They stop seeding”
->
“their bandwidth/hard drive for something else, but because”
“I know people with who”
->
“I know people who”
“people like you, who do whatever is within their power to seed end up being hurt by ratio systems,”
->
“people who do whatever is within their power to seed despite limited resources (like you), end up being hurt by ratio systems”
Sorry, but my grammar OCD compels me to correct my mistakes.
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