On 2/26/07, Aaron Konstam <akonstam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> >>Aaron Konstam wrote: >> I wanted to download the latest FC6 respin CDs. I went to the web >> location and found the correct bittorrent and clicked to download it. >> The bittorrent GUI opened and the download started. Now I was connected >> to a system with an Internet speed of 45 Mb/s but the GUI said the >> download would take 15 hours. Well the respin has 5 CDs. I have a >> downloaded a single 600+ Meg CD in less than an hour (actually I think >> it was much less). So I can't understand why the bittorrent download >> should take 15 hours. >> >> I have done this before but it has been a long time ago. I must be doing >> something wrong but what? Any ideas? > >A couple of things to check - do you have a download speed limit >set, so that it does not use the full bandwidth when downloading? Do >you have your firewall properly configured so that you can seed as >well as download? If not, this can limit your download speed. How >many seeds are there, compared to the number of clients, and how >many are you connected to? My download speed was set too high. I have no firewall set on my machine but the university does however they tell me that they do not restrict bittorrents. I don't know how to check the number of seeds and /or number of clients. So there are clearly holes in my knowledge. Can someone help fill in the gaps. > >One other thing to keep in mind is that the time estimate when you >first start downloading is usually high, and drops as you connect to >more feeds. It also tends to change during the download. Depending >on how the client calculates the time remaining, it may get less >sensitive to rate changes as the download progresses - more data to >average, so temporary fluctuations in download speed do not affect >it as much. The above is true but I waited 2 hours and not even 1 CD was downloaded.
Bittorrent works when there are a large number of seeders and peers. The problem with the Fedora respin is that after the initial availability announcement the number of seeders and peers drops to a very low number, less than 5 when I tried it. If each shares the minimum required upload speed, 4K bits/second, the total bandwidth is only 20K bits/second. Factor the low number of participants and the problem of finding peers with the fragments missing from your download and you get the current situation. Also I find that the tracker used by Fedora respin does not work well with my setup which is behind a firewall.
