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?
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
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.
I never got on Oink but spent some time on What and uploaded a couple albums there. Very difficult to keep ratio high
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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 .
If you’re buying credit, just fucking buy a Usenet subscription instead.
i told upload credit that doesn’t cost any money,usernet cost money
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.
