Is Bittorrent worth it?

Chose a .torrent file over an FTP download and it took forever

[MatthewHSE]

After reading for the past few months about Bittorrent and how much better than FTP it supposedly is for downloads, I decided to give it a try the other day. I had just read about someone getting over 500kb/s on a torrent, and since that blows away anything I've ever gotten by FTP (except for once), I thought that was pretty good.

So, I downloaded a Bittorrent client and started my download. It's been about 24 hours now, and my download speed has averaged about 6-10 kb/s.

I know this whole system is based on "the more you give, the more you get." So, I'm not being stingy with the upload speed I'm allowing. My DSL pipe has plenty of bandwidth to get at least 700kb/s; it's advertised to do 1100 but I've never seen it attain that. In either case, it should be well able to handle much better than 10kb/s up and down at the same time.

So, did I choose a bad download, or has Bittorrent "not arrived" yet, or is it simply not all it's hyped up to be? As it is, I could have downloaded this file in about ten minutes via FTP. Why should I use a method that takes over 24 hours to get the same file?

[encyclo]

BitTorrent works better the more people are downloading (and therefore uploading) it - if you download a torrent where you are the only a few downloading, you have far fewer sources and it can be very slow.

Unless it is a popular file, then, using FTP and downloading from a close mirror with a "fat pipe" is going to be quicker.

[MatthewHSE]

I see. I wondered if it was something like that. The file in question is an ISO of Kanotix Linux so it probably isn't nearly as popular as some movie files would be. Given that most of the files I need are "tech" stuff, I doubt Bittorrent will be a viable option very often.

Thanks for the clarification on this.

[2by4]

"The file in question is an ISO of Kanotix Linux"

Good choice by the way, that's probably the single most underrated linux distro I've seen, the guy who makes that is simply amazing, he's a very good linux guy.

With linux distros, one way to think of it is if you like the distro, and have spare bandwidth, putting it on bittorrent helps it out by dropping how much bandwidth they have to pay for each month.

[chadurban]

I am a fairly new user as well and have donloaded a number of files. No matter how hard i try I can't seem to exceed 50 kb/s donloads.

[Captaffy]

You are likely not using it properly, which is also likely through no fault of your own.

The bittorrent client you are running on your computer has to be able to accept incoming connections from other clients it has never talked to before. If you have a router/firewall, it will not be able to do this since all those packets from strange addresses will be dropped.
Now all those clients that can not connect to you to get pieces they need are also unlikely to share with you the pieces you need, hence your slow speed.

You have to open ports on your router/firewall in order for it to operate at higher speeds. Which ports depends on the client you are using.
(Essentially the client must operate as a server, and so some ports have to be open to allow others to connect to it.)

Also, your download will always start out slowly and then increase in speed as you have more of the file to share. The biggest speeds you are likely to see occur after you have 50% of the file.

[And I say it's through not fault of your own because I haven't seen a bittorrent client web site or install that was really vocal about the fact that ports need to be opened, despite the fact that a huge number of broadband users must have routers.]