Downloading Probs

[caemeroon]

Okay I've looked at several forums trying to find the answer to my prob but I have yet to find it. Here's the deal when I got the comet program I downloaded one movie just find with no problems. Then next I tried to download another movie and it got to 62.5 percent and quit, I figured it was the file so I tried a different file to download it got to 0.2 percent and stopped also. Now I can't download anything and the two downloads mentioned before have not moved a bit since they stopped. Help would be very appreciated.

Thanks

Edited November 22, 2009 by caemeroon (see edit history)

[kluelos]

I don't believe you understand Bittorrent very well. The torrent contents are not files sitting on a server somewhere waiting for you to ask for them. We already had that, didn't need another way to do it.

The files come from you. Or people just like you. Connections and computers just like yours. Lives just like yours. When you're not connected to the internet and using bittorrent, then the files you were uploading aren't available either.

When you start a "download", you join a swarm of peers. They are other people like you interested in trading this torrent. If they, in the aggregate, do not HAVE all of the pieces of the torrent, then none of them are ever going to get a complete download. You'll all swap pieces with each other (you are uploading while you're downloading) and eventually, everybody will have all of the pieces that anyone else in the swarm has. At that point, the transfers will stop. Every peer in the swarm will have 62.5% (or whatever) of the torrent and it won't go any further unless/until somebody with more missing pieces joins the swarm.

Ideally, somebody requested a re-seed, and somebody took pity on you, has 100% of the file and joins as a seeder.

The seeder distributes the missing pieces, which the rest of you trade among yourselves until you yourself have 100% of the torrent. Then you drop out and leave the others to fend for themselves, while some new guy joins the swarm, slowly downloads for awhile, then finds that HE is stuck at 65% (since all of you who were in the swarm, got yours and left instead of seeding awhile). He hears about a help forum and decides to join and ask...

Bittorrent depends on you doing your part. You're stuck because somebody else didn't do theirs.

How many peers are in the swarm now? That's all you care about, the now. The index site (where you got the torrent) may say that there are 27 seeders and 1,000 peers -- but that was some time last year. Now, there are none. This torrent isn't going very far.

That torrent has 40 peers who have all downloaded 0%, no seeders and a "health" - how much of the torrent this swarm has in the aggregate -- of 0% (nobody gots nothin'). Somebody uploaded the torrent itself to an index site, but hasn't seeded it. Nothing will happen until he does start seeding it. Maybe he can't. Life happened to him. Come back in a while (an hour, a day, a week) and maybe he'll have started seeding it. Maybe he never will. Maybe there's a good reason (he messed up this torrent, made a fixed one and is seeding that), maybe there isn't, maybe he's just a screwball who does this for reasons nobody can figure out.

Maybe the torrent is a fake and everyone's figured that out but you. Maybe it's infected, and if you'd read the comments about the torrent you'd know that too.

Maybe the torrent is ancient, and though it was kept alive for many years by a succession of downloaders who became seeders, kept it going for awhile, then passed it on to others, it's finally run out of people interested enough to keep it going.