upload speed vs. download speed

[abletudu]

:(

I am fairly new to using bitcomet and am logged in. It seems to me that with an unlimited download limit and a 450kbs upload limit my speeds should be greater downloading than uploading. I am running Windows 7 with a quad core CPU, 4GB Ram, and a 7Mbs internet download connection.

My upload speed is about 25kbs andf my download is only 2-3kbs and it shouldn't take another 3.5 hours to download 41MB.

What is going on here? Can anyone explain it to me?

Thanx.

P.S. sorry about the multiple post, it was an accident.

Edited November 20, 2010 by abletudu (see edit history)

[kluelos]

You should probably spend some time reading in our Guides and Tutorials forum. Definitely read the settings guide and the speed guide, but there's a lot of others that are good to know in there.

Very briefly, your download comes not from a server somewhere, but from other people like you, with computers like yours and connections like yours.

When you download a piece of a torrent, you then upload that piece to other peers.

You must give in order to get. If you don't give, your download speed drops to a trickle because nobody wants to trade with you. The other peers can find faster and more reliable connections to use instead.

Bittorrent software does this automatically using what's called a "greedy" algorithm that tries to maximize its own input.

You must configure and operate your client properly in order to achieve good speeds in this competitive environment.

If you do that, you should be able to max out your connection unless you are mostly downloading things that don't have much general interest.

[abletudu]

:unsure: I tried reading the guide, but some of the things got me a little confused as my tested download speed is 7.59Mbs and my tested upload is .96Mbs. The guide talks about setting things in Kbs and explain how to convert from kilobits to kilobytes, but not from Mb to Kb and how to set the speeds accordingly. Could someone please help???

Thanks

[greywizard]

Well, the "deca", "centi", "kilo", "mega", "giga" (and so on) multiples are taught and learned in primary or secondary school (depending on the country).

Therefore, ANY guide author would rightfully assume that all users would be able to figure out for themselves that 1Mb/s = 1,000Kb/s = 1,000,000 b/s (bits per second).

It's the bytes multiples that are a bit trickier since they are powers of 2. Thus:

1 KB = 1024 B(bytes) --> that is 2¹⁰ bytes

1 MB = 1024 KB --> that is 2¹⁰ KB or 2²⁰ B (bytes) or 2²³ b (bits).

In order to avoid confusion (since many HDD and compact disc media vendors use MB or GB as multiples that are powers of 10 - i.e. 1GB = 1000MB, that is 10³, instead of 1GB = 1024MB), in the last years, when KB or MB units are used (as powers of 2) the unit KiB or MiB is often being used. They stand for the same powers of 2 multiples, but are used as a disambiguation.