the forums at degreez.net

I've just discovered BitTornado, and so far I've managed to get past the firewall problems by searching the past messages in this forum. Incidentally, one problem I discovered was that Windows XP own Firewallwas installed (presumably by default) in addition to my main Mcafee Firewall. I had to disable the Windows XP one before getting the changes I had made to Mcafee to work.

Anyway, to my questions.

1) I've been looking to find answers on how the "Share Rating" works. I understand the concept, but not the detail, and I couldn't see any FAQ's to read. Is the Rating stored across multiple download? what should I be aiming for ? etc

2) On my PC, I have just downloaded a huge file, which worked fine. I did it over several days, and just resumed to complete the last segment. I have left the torrent running as requested. Despite a relatively slow upload speed, the Torrent slows down every other browser action (dramatically) on my machine (which is reasonably high spec). Is there any way to limit the resources it uses on my PC without affecting upload (and download) speeds.

3) The way to use the settings is not clear. Again I couln't find an FAQ. I have it set for unlimited, 0 upload rate & 4 max uploads

All the share rating is is how much you uploaded divided by how much you downloaded. If you uploaded half the torrent to get a whole torrent, your "Share Rating" would display as 0.5. If you uploaded a quarter of the torrent to get the whole torrent, your Share Rating would show as 0.25. The share rating in no way affects the speed you will get from other peers/seeds. Some feel it is best to try to share back as much as you received (Share Rating of "1") on a torrent to help keep the torrent alive.

Which settings specifically? If you mean the upload speed, on asymmetric connections (ones where the downstream is much faster than the upstream), it is recommended to set the max upload rate setting to 80% of your max upstream (or 90% of your max upstream in the latest BitTornado, version 0.3.3). You could test your upstream by grabbing a hot torrent then leaving it at "unlimited" for a few minutes then seeing what upload rate it hovers around the longest and consider that to be your max upstream. Multiply that upstream max you saw by 0.80 (or 0.90 in BitTornado 0.3.3). For example, if your max upstream is 45k/s, that times 0.80 is 36k/s (or for BitTornado 0.3.3, that times 0.90 is roughly 40k/s). Then set that new number as your limit, by first choosing the "settings for" option where it fits in the range (in this example: "dsl/cable fast") then using the slider to set the number (or the arrows, or entering it by hand).

Thanks byte torrent. These have been great answers

I understand both points now. Many thanks