BitTorrent question - something seems odd

[quarterback]

I'm new to bittorrent, so forgive me if I'm just missing something here, but there's something going on that seems strange to me.

I'm downloading something.

[paigeoliver]

I'm new to bittorrent, so forgive me if I'm just missing something here, but there's something going on that seems strange to me.

I'm downloading something.  There are NO complete seeds and only ONE other person online with any of the file.

That person has 17.2%   I have 17.1%.    Nothing is being uploaded from me, I'm just downloading....

the thing is, as soon as I get to 17.2, they appear to have 17.3..... and I keep downloading.... then when I get to 17.3%, they appear to have 17.4.... and I keep downloading.... and so on and so on and....

What's happening here?

Could THEY be in the process of downloading a complete seed from somewhere?

[quarterback]

Could THEY be in the process of downloading a complete seed from somewhere?

They could, but I figured I'd see that seed as well, no?

Or is it possible that they have access to that seed but I can't see it?

Also, if I stop my download and come back later, their % hasn't changed.  Okay, realistically I haven't put that to a full test.   I only recently REALLY noticed this behavior because I finally caught up with them.  But when I shut things down earlier and then came back, I'm pretty sure their % hadn't changed at all.

At first I *thought* that they must have been getting some little portion from me, but that's definitely not the case at this point.  And at this rate of increasing by .1% every 15 minutes or so, I've got an estimated 175 HOURS left for a full download!

I just thought that maybe this was some 'bug' or something that caused this to appear to happen while, in reality, no new data was being downloaded at all.

[paigeoliver]

Ok, that sounds fishy to me.

[quarterback]

It just seems... wierd.

I'm going to disconnect and try again tomorrow to see if anything's changed.

Thanks po'

[pointdablame]

You don't have to see every seed/peer that is available.  In fact, you probably never have a torrent that sees 100% of the peers and seeds.

They are getting it from somewhere else.  If you aren't uploading it to him, someone else is.  He isn't magically getting the file

[quarterback]

You don't have to see every seed/peer that is available.

[TheTick]

Read the FAQs. Depending on your client Super-Seeders are not visible under the same table as Seeders/Leechers.

[jbox]

Try not to presume you know what individual clients/trackers do when the network is small. This is a protocol for a *large* network, and once that assumption goes out the window you are going to get more specific behaviour from the software than generic "BitTorrent" behaviours.

That being said, this sounds *exactly* like super-seeding to me too.

[quarterback]

Thanks y'all.   There clearly is something else seeding this other guy.   He's up .4% since I last checked/shut down.   Slowly but surely!

[jbox]

Errr, just for the listeners at home the phrase "super seeding" generally refers to the practice of the source of the torrent only sharing a few % of the download at a time. It *only* releases new blocks after it is sure someone else is sharing the previous ones.

The general idea is to 'force' the tree to branch much more sharply than normal to spread the cost away from the seeder. It is a PITA in this kind of situation when there *is* no tree.

I believe some people have had some limited success in running multiple clients from different IPs depending upon whether the tracker software is generating seperate seeding lists for each client or whether it is only using a single global seed list.