Speed Up Your Downloads by Choosing the Fastest Torrents

Even if you know everything there is to know about BitTorrent apps, your downloads can still be slow as molasses. It's not you, it's the torrent. All-things-BitTorrent weblog TorrentFreak discusses how to speed up your downloads by picking the fastest torrents.

In a nutshell, it's all about the percentage of seeders in a swarm, as TorrentFreak's Ernesto points out:

Many people understand these basics. A torrent with 30 seeders and 70 leechers (30% seeders) will go faster than one with 10 seeders and 90 leechers (10% seeders). However, it gets confusing when you compare swarms of different sizes.

For example, a torrent with 30 seeders and 70 leechers (30% seeders) will generally be faster than one with 500 seeders and 2500 leechers (20% seeders). Why? Simply because the swarm has a smaller percentage of seeders. When picking the right torrents to download, the percentage of seeders that a swarm consists of is the most important thing to look at.

A higher percentage of seeders means that the average upload capacity available to the leechers will be higher.

So next time you go looking for a fast torrent, don't just head straight for the download with the most seeders. Instead, find the torrent with the highest seeder to leecher ratio.

Got your own best practices for blazing BitTorrent speeds? Let's hear it in the comments.