No peers, no seeding

JM68PM

I have to first admit that I'm no expert, so if you can help, please make your answer understandable.

I've seen several other posts about this, but none of the solutions that I was able to try resolved the issue. I have over 1000 torrents in uTorrent, but lately NONE of them is seeding. Nor do they show any peers. Downloading is fine. Of course this has caused my ratio to plummet.

Here's an example of a file I just downloaded. It shows:

Seeds: 0 of 41 connected (233 in swarm)
Peers: 0 of 64 connected (3 in swarm)

While the numbers are different, every other torrent also has '0' for seeds/peers connected.

So what is the issue? I am using Windows 11 and Proton VPN, but that hasn't changed. I haven't changed any settings in uTorrent. I have restarted uTorrent numerous times, but that didn't help. What is happening and how do I fix it?

lololulu19

@JM68PM one thing you could do is post the link to a couple of the torrents you are referring to, and see if other people can download them.

JM68PM

@lololulu19 Thanks for your response.

Here are a couple of them:

There are several dozen more. All shown as "seeding," but with no upload speed. The first one has 2 leechers.

ianfontinell 0

@JM68PM just in case you're not familiar:

Seeder, or uploading peer, refers to any computer who finished downloading all files and kept the torrent running afterwards.
Peer refers to any computer that has the torrent running. Peers might have 0 pieces, some pieces, or all pieces.
Leecher, or downloading peer, refers to any computer that has the torrent running but does not have all pieces.

Once you finish downloading a torrent, you will no longer connect to other seeders, except for health check.
Having a torrent running with "seeding" status does not mean you will start uploading pieces whenever a new leecher joins the swarm.

Because the number of seeders on private trackers is always much bigger than the number of leechers, only some seeders will be contacted. Seeding a torrent does not mean that you will be uploading it every time a new leecher connects, there are too many seeders for them to pick, and clients use algorithms to select peers based on factors like upload speed, latency, and fairness. Even if you're a high-speed seeder, the selection process involves randomness and may not always choose your client for uploads.

If you want to be sure that your client can be reached by peers who are trying to download, the best way to do it is by downloading recent torrents from public trackers, like a movie or TV episode. If you can upload data to any peer, you are reachable, meaning neither your Internet provider nor your VPN is getting in the way. It is possible that others have trouble connecting to you based on their own client/network conditions.

If you find that your client is reachable for torrents with higher demand, there is nothing to be fixed on your end. You need to find ways to improve your ratio without relying on torrent demand, like uploading your own torrents or only downloading torrents on freeleech. If you are downloading freeleeched stuff with the sole purpose of improving your ratio, you must pick the ones with the least seeders.

JM68PM

@ianfontinell-0
Thanks for taking the time to explain this in detail. While I had a vague idea of how this all worked, your explanation was very helpful.

I admit that I'm still confused, however, as with over 1000 active torrents, I find it hard to believe that none of them can be seeded. And as I mentioned, this seems to be a recent development -- in the past, there was always substantial uploading activity going on. My ratio was over 1.25 at one point, I think. Now it's barely 1.0. And since I've never uploaded my own torrents (I'd like to learn how to do so one day!), this was all based on seeding.

ianfontinell 0

Of course the more torrents you have seeding, higher the chances of connecting to peers, but you need to have in mind that it is not sustainable to rely on seeding alone to keep a positive ratio. It is easier for new accounts to maintain a good ratio, but as your downloaded data increases, so increases the amount of data you are required to seed to recover your ratio. If you download 10GB in total, the amount you're required to seed in order to keep a positive ratio is 10GB. 10GB is a fairly small number, a pretty reasonable amount that is easy to seed. If you downloaded 1TB in total, now you're required to seed 1TB, which is much more unlikely. The demand on private trackers is never 1:1, meaning you will never reach 1 ratio for every torrent you download. Of course no one downloads 1TB in one go (usually), it's breaken down into much smaller bits that you download without realizing how much of an impact it will have in the future, and when you notice you have a negative ratio, despite having 1000 torrents in your client list.

I use qbittorrent as my client because it's has more features compared to utorrent, for instance i can order my list by session upload:

This orders the list based on the amount of bytes sent since the last time the client started, which makes it more practical to track torrents with higher demand. In general, it follows a pattern, newer torrents have higher demand and are easier to seed. Older torrents might have a spike in demand if they are freeleeched. Apart from these two conditions, the torrents that you downloaded 8 months or 2 years ago will have a very low demand.