Stupid Questions General

[Saddam Hussain Obama]

ask stupid tech questions

 

[Administrator Flotsam]

Why is Canada?

 

[Matt Damon]

Okay, I've got a stupid question:

What exactly are torrent clients looking at when they say there are a certain number of seeds for a torrent? Are those people who are active and have the file? Are they all the seeds my client has EVER seen for even a split second since I added the torrent, active or not?



I will occasionally get into a situation like this while downloading [very legal and very cool Linux distributions] where my client claims there are a fair number of seeds out there and yet the torrent will stall out for hours or days at a time. If ten people have that whole file and I can see them, why am I getting zero activity for long periods of time?

 

[Waifu Denier]

Okay, I've got a stupid question:

What exactly are torrent clients looking at when they say there are a certain number of seeds for a torrent? Are those people who are active and have the file? Are they all the seeds my client has EVER seen for even a split second since I added the torrent, active or not?

View attachment 5308008

I will occasionally get into a situation like this while downloading [very legal and very cool Linux distributions] where my client claims there are a fair number of seeds out there and yet the torrent will stall out for hours or days at a time. If ten people have that whole file and I can see them, why am I getting zero activity for long periods of time?

I'm pretty sure the number in parenthesis is the number reported in the swarm, but it is not entirely accurate at that specific moment since they can be currently offline, maxed out on connections, etc.