How can everyone on a private tracker maintain seed ratios above 1? Is it mathematically impossible? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I know that private trackers require users to maintain a good seed ratio. How exactly does that work out mathematically? If a bunch of users have seed ratios above 1, does that mean that there are some users who will forever be below 1, and thus end up getting kicked out, thus resulting in the private tracker just... shrinking over time?

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[-] [email protected] 45 points 5 days ago

Mechanics I've seen to avoid this:

Occasional sitewide freeleech
bonus points for seeding duration irregardless of upload, can be traded for reducing download
freeleech torrents (only counts upload not download)
partial freeleech (25/50/75% download counted)
Timed freeleech (free first 24h)
Download % counted reduced based on seed size (seed >1tb and everything's freeleech)
Reduction of download % counted based on rank
Forum competitions for bonus points/freeleech tokens
Freeleech tokens giveouts

Hell, there's quite a few PT's that don't care about ratio and just have minimum seeding times on torrents.

Plenty of these trackers have been running 1-2 decades on 1 or more of these methods just fine.

Almost every site is laughably easy to keep ratio if you read the rules/FAQ, look at some what's to build points/ratio, read the forums, and don't go nuts In the first week while your establishing your account

[-] [email protected] 12 points 5 days ago

Iirc what.cd was freeleech for the first week, so i did go nuts. Downloaded anything that seemed popular that didn't have a huge amount of seeders, and then after the freeleech period ended i downloaded basically every freeleech torrent i could find whether i wanted it or not, just for the seeding. This let me keep quite a good ratio despite having a terrible upload speed at the time. Alot of sites will also give bonus seeder points for uploading new torrents i think, especially if they have a request or bounty system.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

I don't recall w.cd having FL first week, but they did have semi regular weeks. Mebbe you filled it? I had a seedbox, when a FL period started I redid my entire library and permaseeded, shot through the ranks and was basically set for life.

I miss w.cd

[-] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

I never got on Oink but spent some time on What and uploaded a couple albums there. Very difficult to keep ratio high

[-] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago

Websites that waste my time and leave my seedbox occupied yet idle until I play their games really annoy me and I quit them all. I currently have no private tracker accounts except rutracker.

These system want to economise bandwidth and space and leave them all idle.

The problem is your seed stays idle unless there actually is someone willing to download.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

why you need every torrent 1 ratio. i have some mid tracker I can't fulfill any torrent ratio 1 ,just fullfil seedtime and earn bonus and buy credit if the earn of seed bonus is difficult,i just uploaded some torrent and get upload credit .

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

If you’re buying credit, just fucking buy a Usenet subscription instead.

[-] [email protected] 35 points 5 days ago

On many trackers, you get "paid" for time seeded. Usually in the forms of bonus points or the like. You can then exchange these for improving your ratio (or a freeleech token, or an invite,...).

It's a system that also rewards keeping media available even if you are not uploading to anyone.

Also, keep in mind that often, a large part of the available content is freeleech (meaning leeching it doesn't affect your ratio), but seeding those torrents usually still does improve your ratio.

[-] [email protected] 19 points 5 days ago

These systems work pretty great especially if you have shitty upload speeds but lots of HDD space. It also helps balance things out as seedbox users have high bandwidth but limited storage while home seeders have low bandwidth but high storage, meaning things spread quickly to start and stay available for a long time after.

[-] [email protected] 17 points 5 days ago

If every private tracker required a 1:1 ratio and didn’t offer any points scheme to boost ratio then you’d have a great point.

In my experience there are no trackers with both a 1:1 ratio requirement and no points scheme.

Get in, the waters fine.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 5 days ago

You don’t have to, private trackers have systems to deal with this. On MAM, for example, you get points for seeding, regardless of whether or not somebody is downloading from you. I stopped keeping track of my ratio months ago, but last time I looked it was like 23 and I have somewhere above 150 freeleech tokens. So basically nothing I ever download is gonna be held against me.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

Love MAM but hate it doesn't support mobile clients. All of my seeding is mainly done on my old android.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

The vast majority of private trackers do not have a "hard" ratio economy like you describe. Most private trackers are flexible to give users ways to increase their own upload ratio without requiring that ratio to be "paid" by another user doing the downloading. e.g. when torrents are freeleech the users get to download for free but can still upload to improve their own ratio. And when there's bonus systems in place those bonus points can be used to add to the user's own uploaded data count. And sometimes private trackers have events where they make the entire tracker, or entire categories of torrents, freeleech so a whole ton of users get to download for free and will still be able to seed those same torrents afterwards.

does that mean that there are some users who will forever be below 1, and thus end up getting kicked out, thus resulting in the private tracker just… shrinking over time?

Sure, that could happen too. Private trackers will always get some users that just aren't going to cut it and eventually lose access to the tracker. In most cases the tracker will just end up adding new users and maintain the total user count. Each tracker is going to be different in how they approach this.. I think over time the user churn doesn't happen as much, at some point there's enough users on the tracker that are doing fine with ratio and whatnot while the tracker hits its own maximum user count so actually needing to replace users with new signups becomes less of a priority.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 5 days ago

A closed group of users can all have a seed ratio above 1.0, but it's a bit of a contrived set up. For simplicity, in the following examples we assume that each file is the same size, but this also works for other combinations.

Consider the smallest group, two users. If user A seeds a file and user B downloads it, whilst B seeds a different file, which A downloads, both users will have a ratio of 1.0 as they've up and down loaded the same amount.

For three users, A seeds a file, B and C then download a different half each, which they then share with each other. A has a total (upload, download) of (1,0), whilst B and C have (0.5,1). If you repeat this with B seeding and A and C downloading, then C seeding to A and B, you get each peer uploading 2 files worth of data, and downloading 2 files worth, for a ratio of 1.0 each.

You can keep adding peers and keep the ratios balanced, so it is possible for all the users on a private tracker to have a 1.0 ratio, but it's very unlikely to work out like that in real life, which is why you have other ways to boost your ratio.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 5 days ago

I just want to point out one contradiction...

You mathed out how to maintain exactly a 1.0. But you asserted, "A closed group of users can all have a seed ratio above 1.0"

You didn't show how this is possible.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

A valid point, trackers often give you a certain amount of upload credit for free, and there are often other ways to earn those credits too, so all users' ratios would be above 1.0, but that should have read "A closed group of users can all have a seed ratio of 1.0" if we're looking at just the data transfer itself.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 5 days ago

Most trackers provide points for seeding torrents. Usually the amount of points depends on the size and the amount of torrents.

These points can be exchanged for "upload" (or other things like an invite), which helps with increasing the ratio.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 5 days ago

On some trackers you can straight up pay to raise to raise your ratio, or even temporarily "freeleech". This is all kinds of iffy, flirting with the scummy.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

If you are talking about sites that have a strict, non-negotiable seeding ratio requirement, it is impossible. Your only real long-term option is to write a script that will grab everything that gets uploaded on a 30-second cadence, and then aggressively super-seed that content back out. And this is regardless of what it is - this script runs 24/7, doing about 2,880 hits on the website a day for new content. Still, even with the script it will be difficult to have your overall ratio exceed more than about 1.5-2, and you may still get banned for individual seeds that never exceed 1 because no-one is very interested in them.

I have tried to use sites that have strict ratio minimums, and long-term success is impossible without an edge like the script I mentioned. It’s why I now work with sites - like myanonamouse - that have minimum seeding times for everything you grab, regardless if anyone else needs it. They tend to be far less stressful and user-hostile.

[-] [email protected] 18 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

That is simply not true. I’m a member of many private torrent sites, and the key is to simply seed all of your content for as long as you have it in your collection.

Freeleech events allow you to build a large library of content that you expended no credit to download, but will get credit for uploading. Most sites have some kind of bonus point system for seeding content long term, and those points can often be used to buy more credit.

At this point, I have so much credit building up on a regular basis that I like to put terabytes worth of it towards requests just to spread the love around. I have managed all of this through simply perma-seeding everything with a computer that is on 24/7. My current internet speed isn’t even stellar, but the sheer size of my seeded content gets the job done. I tend to be actively uploading multiple things every second of the day now.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

Yeah same.

NAS is running with everything I downloaded, seeding 24/7. I started back up about a year ago and my ratio passed 10 before Christmas. I did not download a single thing I didn't want, but I try to stick to movies big enough to be freelech and downloaded seasons instead of single episodes, again as they are freeleech.

Fun fact for those strugling: my top 10 ratio seeds are all freelech and has netted a total of 2,6 TB. Not a single one of those files are newer than 3 years old.

It's hard in the beginning, but stick to freeleech and keep building ratio, and before you know it you won't have to think about it anymore.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

the key is to simply seed all of your content for as long as you have it in your collection.

Tell that to TheGeeks. If you aren’t actively uploading - not just sitting there sharing, but actively sending data to anyone else - you’ll eventually be warned, then banned.

Back when I was trying to use their site, they had only one system: strict 1 ratio on a time limit. If you couldn’t maintain a 1+ ratio, and achieve it within a very limited amount of time, it didn’t matter what you grabbed or how long you shared back out, you got banned. At the time they had no other way to get ratio other than sharing back out - no freeleech, nothing. Which meant if you were wanting any content more than 2-3 HOURS old, you were looking at a ratio shortfall because there was no way to make up that ratio you were losing by downloading that content. There were simply too few peers after you to overcome the masses of seeders ahead of you satisfying peers.

It was absolutely brutal, which is why I now refuse to deal with any sites with that rule (1+ ratio with time limit) even if they have other ways (freeleech, etc.) to mitigate it. Like, f**k those sites. I’ve been seeding some torrents for close to 15 years, I have no problem letting shit remain resident in my client. So sites like MyAnonamouse it’s going to have to remain.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Well…yeah. The point of seeding forever is that you are uploading. Though I am not familiar with TheGeeks specifically, I imagine that rule is in place to keep people from setting a low bandwidth limit on their client and exploiting bonus points for free downloads.

Regardless, you are talking about a sample size of one. Most reputable private trackers have a required ratio that increases with the amount of data you’ve downloaded, eventually hitting 1/1 when you have downloaded enough content to be expected to be a good seeder.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

TheGeeks are asshats. I had a similar situation and got banned. They are one of the only ones I have had this happen with, but you are not alone. I have heard many others complain too.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

Did that, seedbox full, idle, near zero traffic for month, barely reach 1.0 ratio. Big waste of my resources.

Nobody downloading because they know they can't seed their ratio back up.

Tracker operator sold ratio passes at 1$ per GB...

[-] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago

You seem to be talking about a completely different thing than the comment you replied to. The commenter above was talking about long-term seeding being incentivized by the tracker (it helps with keeping torrents alive). While you seem to be talking about short-term seeding. A month is not a long time.

Not every tracker gives bonus points (aka BON aka karma) the same way. I advise you look for one that fits your needs and use it instead of the one you're complaining about. (Some examples of what sites use for BON: torrent size, torrent age, seeding time, remaining seeders, total seedpool)

[-] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

That honestly just sounds like a bad site. Others are far more active than that.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

and then aggressively super-seed that content back out.

What exactly do you mean by super-seed? In torrent clients there is indeed something called super-seeding aka initial seeding but that does quite the opposite of "aggressively" seed anything. The whole point of super-seeding is to encourage other peers/leeches to share data amongst themselves and hopefully become seeds themselves. This results in your own torrent client avoiding uploading torrent data to the swarm more than necessary, it's the opposite of building ratio if you're minimizing uploading data.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-seeding

https://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0016.html

It might be you meant to aggressively seed on an internet pipe with high upload bandwidth e.g. one of those 20 Gbps seedboxes or similar, that would make sense.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

I got cooked on fnp when they raised the ratio from 0.7 to 0.8 now i cant download anything. It sucks.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Check dm

[-] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago

Some enable freeleach. I can set this in prowlarr so I only download freeleach items. These don't count for leeching, just seeding. Then you set your seed ratio to whatever they recommend like say 5x or 30 days. If you're looking for something that isn't freeleach, then it'll count against you a little, but your ratio should be high enoigh to handle it. Bonus points on top of that too. I use one private and lots of public.