High-Speed BitTorrent - A Look Inside the 1Gbps Seedbox
October 03, 08 by sharky 4,968 views
Around here, we’re no strangers to seedboxes. If you’ve ever been privy to one, you’ll probably find it hard going back to regular home torrenting once you get accustomed to the download speed and seeding power. Well, that’s exactly what we’ll be facing next week when our TorrentSwift 1Gbps seedbox account expires. Alas, we’ll be downgrading back to our slow-as-molasses 100Mbps (mbit) seedbox where bandwidth is capped at a meager 12,500 KB/s (in a best-case scenario). But it sure was a fun ride while it lasted.
Let us share with you our torrenting experience with the next-generation 1Gbps port - most certainly this is the future of high-speed BitTorrent and already popular among many "pro" seeders. First of all, it’s somewhat difficult to fully grasp the concept of what 1Gbps really is. Take for example; if you have an above-average highspeed cable or DSL hookup at home, you’re probably getting download speeds of around 1.0 MB/s (on a 10Mbps plan). A 1Gbps connection is 100 times faster than that. Thus feasibly, you could download at 100MB per second; to put this in perspective a 700MB movie would take just 7 seconds to complete. This all sounds great on paper, but it doesn’t work like that - for two reasons: Firstly, most hardware (the hard disk in particular) isn’t able to read/write at that speed anyways, so you’re limited in that regard (although a workaround for this is to use SCSI drives/RAID configuration & whatnot). And secondly, you won’t be able to find anyone capable of seeding to you at that high a rate in order to maximize the throughput. After all, you can only download as fast as the swarm is uploading. We’ll get back to this later.
Perhaps we squandered our shot on a 1Gbps server by using the TorrentFlux-b4rt GUI. I can almost hear the screams from the Linux/rTorrent people who are reading this right now, knowing full well they could have done much, much better! Indeed true, but we weren’t aiming to do any serious ratio-buffering. Our focus was to find a great server with TorrentFlux already installed and ready-to-go as intended for the average (novice) seedbox user.
Only a handful of TorrentFlux seedbox retailers provide "available" 1Gbps-connected servers as part of their offered packages. Certainly, you could probably ask any of them to customize a plan, or get yourself one from LeaseWeb and install a torrent GUI yourself. For simplicity’s sake, we opted for a dedicated server with TFlux already installed from TorrentSwift.com.
TorrentSwift’s Dedicated TFlux Seedbox - The "Tiger 500"
There are two plans offered by TS that have a 1Gbps pipe, and that’s the Tiger 500 and the Tiger 600. Both are very impressive machines running on 8 GB RAM, but we couldn’t justify another $100 for the additional (but colossal) 750 GB hard drive space and the extra 5 TB monthly bandwidth transfer.
NOTE: As with most 1Gbps providers, the connection is not dedicated - this is shared over a few servers - so while it is possible to burst the full 1Gbps you are going to see better speeds during quieter off-peak hours. However, there is a 20,000 KB/s guarantee on these servers (at all times).
We opted for the $200 Tiger 500, and we were logged into it in under 24 hours. Money well spent! Here’s our take on some common myths and solutions to maximize speeds on a 1Gbps connection:
1Gbps Torrent Speeds, Testing and Optimization
As already mentioned, it’s highly unlikely to find a seeder who is capable of uploading at any sustainable rate in order for anyone to maximize the 1Gbps DL bandwidth on just one single torrent. There is no "50 MB/s torrent" - at least not that we found. Even if we were to get lucky and connect a dedicated 1Gbps seeder, it’s unlikely that it would be his/her only active torrent - thus the bandwidth would likely be watered down over a multitude of torrents anyways. For this, individual torrents seem to mimic the bandwidth behavior of a typical 100mbit seedbox, perhaps a little bit better. But it is the whole experience that puts 1Gbps to the test. You won’t see this screen on a 100mbit seedbox:
To properly utilize the bandwidth, we needed to add a LOT of torrents simultaneously (preferably large ones, since they complete so quickly), which is stressful on the server(load). That’s where a XEON Quad or Core2Quad comes in handily, coupled with 8 GB RAM (which we have). We pushed this beast into a serverload in excess of "25", and nothing broke. Server response appeared slightly slower, but speeds did not diminish and the ‘page refresh’ worked perfectly, although it lagged somewhat.
To be perfectly honest, we weren’t able hit the 50 MB/s mark (overall). Not that we tried all that hard, either. We steered clear of 100GB ‘ratio-busting’ torrents that would have downloaded for a much longer period of time, giving us ample opportunity to load in even more torrents. Nor did we necessarily choose the most popular (new) torrents, which would have resulted in more connections and larger swarms. We simply added a mixed bag of torrents (big and small, high-to-low seeded) to get an overall picture of what a typical user would be doing. The best speeds were able to come up with were somewhere in the high 20’s (almost 30,000 KB/s) during peak hours - still, quite a substantial improvement over a 100mbit seedbox.
Become a TFlux Seedbox Reseller
All things told, if you’re an incurable torrent freak who has some excess money, a 1gbps seedbox is the way to go. If $200 a month seems too much for you, remember, this is a dedicated server - it’s yours and yours alone! You’ll be able divide the server into sub accounts for rental (reselling), which is really simple to do through the TorrentFlux interface. The main advantage here is that with 8 GB RAM and a shared 1Gbps pipe, you’ll be able to split it up into several accounts and keep everyone happy, and perhaps even turn yourself a tidy profit (plus a free seedbox).
01 • Bill Says: 04.10.08 at 12:22 am
kimsufi 1gbps is cheaper
02 • Hugs Says: 04.10.08 at 12:24 am
Why only talking about torrentswift ? Some other 1Gb OVH resellers are cheaper (99€ at seedbox.fr, seedhost.eu, dediseed.wordpress.com) and OVH himself for those can buy it directly.
But when we think about it, is P2P really adapted to high speed servers downloading for home users ? I am wondering that when I see on Rslog comments last releases with RS. And sometimes only 30min after publishing on “scene” trackers, on wich you have to spend time and/or money to keep a good ratio. And RS or Usenet are only ~8€ / month…
03 • bryan Says: 04.10.08 at 1:03 am
Yah, 1gbs seedboxes rox sox, but you already know that sharky lol
04 • Rad Says: 04.10.08 at 1:52 pm
Hmm… u could easily rape a new tracker’s self owned seedbox if they got free leech on.
05 • Username Says: 04.10.08 at 4:39 pm
But why pay that much for a box? A simple 100 mbit would do wonders, and cost a LOT less than a 1 gbps box.
06 • bryan Says: 04.10.08 at 8:20 pm
a benz does wonders, but people still buy lambos. why? faster
07 • lol Says: 05.10.08 at 10:30 am
hmm last I checked 23mB/s wasn’t a gigabit
not even close actually
08 • bo Says: 05.10.08 at 7:23 pm
You’ll never get an actual gigabit speed.
Just like a 100mbps generally caps around 50mbps… ditto for gigabits
unless you have a lot of RAM with a RAID0 hard drive setup and a high performance torrent client (ie not torrentflux)
09 • Vision Says: 08.10.08 at 11:35 am
how many torrents Active/Idle did it toke to get the server load to 26 ???
i knew it’s TorrentFlux GUI but with quad core and 8G ram i guess a lot
i hope to hear a reply soon
thanks for being a pioneer filesharefreak !!!!
010 • Vision Says: 10.10.08 at 8:45 am
sharky , please answer my question…
how many torrents have you used (both idle\active) to get 26 of server load
011 • sharky Says: 10.10.08 at 4:04 pm
@VISION -For the screenshot in the article (and…BTW, I actually had it to 36) I was
really pushing hard to develop some good DL speeds, and I already know that
you really won’t get great speeds from downloading just one torrent at a
time. So, knowing that this dedicated server is brand-new with 8 GB RAM, I
knew I could *almost* add an unlimited amount of torrents simultaneously,
without killing it. This is basically what I did - I browsed through some
private torrents (torrentleech was a good start) looking for good S/L
numbers. I knew these would be fast (hopefully in both directions). TFlux
was a little bit choppy at 25-35 serverload, but it still refreshed every 60
seconds (Ajax was OFF). Never once did it crash or become unresponsive - but
it all has to do with the machine that TFlux is installed on. I’ve seen a
serverload of 5-10 kill many-a-machines, due to lack of RAM, mostly.
To answer your question, the number of ACTIVE ‘leeching’ torrents was around
25-30 - keep in mind that these 25 were ALL downloading at the same time,
and not only seeding. If I recall correctly (for that screenshot) there
were just 2 idle torrents, and maybe an additional 5 seeding torrents -
bringing the total to under 40 torrents. And that was a conservative
screenshot, for I’d had at least 50 or 60 in there before, maybe more. Not
only was that my first experience with a 1gbps pipe, but also with a seedbox
that had such excellent specs - so I wanted to verify that a serverload of
20 or higher will function just fine. I now believe the serverload means
nothing, as long as the machine can support it. I’m quite certain I could
have easily pushed that baby to a serverload over 50, but this wasn’t in my
best interest for viable screenshots, etc.
012 • Vision Says: 10.10.08 at 7:55 pm
thanks sharky,
it’s to some point true what you said about server load means nothing, i had a seedbox that entered a coma with 15 of server load (and a very expensive seedbox), while in another company my seedbox worked fine even with server load of 30 !!
i’ve read your article about {http://seedboxhosting.com} and you said that the server toke 50 torrents easily, so yes i guess that a machine like this with a proper use can work as a black hole sucking all the data from the net(except it will seed it back)
i can see that TorrentSwift has changed it’s plans, now you get 750G X 2(Raid 1) and unlimited traffic for the 300$, still expensive but i guess it worth’s it, specially if you could convince them to put utorrent instead of torrentflux and the Raid configuration to 0 .
thanks again sharky, i hope you keep this excellence work flowing
013 • rem Says: 12.10.08 at 11:36 am
22 000 kb/s with 1 gigabit? L O L!
i get 80 MB/s with gigabit when i transfer files with ftp sites
014 • Visitor Says: 16.10.08 at 8:59 pm
Something is really wrong in this article. Yes, a Gbit-connection can net around 100MB/s and thus a normal DVDrip is 7 seconds of downloading and a DVD around 45 seconds. Let’s say, for the record, you need drives that can write (or read) 100MB/s.
What’s the deal about telling people it might not be feasible? Ordinary desktop-drives (single disk) are currently doing 75MB/s on sequential read. And when I look at the Tiger-servers you mention; no sane company would hook you up with Xeon-machines and NOT incorporate a solid disk-array. Hell, my current 3disk RAID5 at home can read at well over 150MB/s and write nearly 120Mb/s and that’s a “cheap” US$1200.- machine.
So, despite the fact I like most of the articles here, something seems incorrect on this article; even basic Dell-servers (1950 models) will average 80MB/s on single disks let alone beefed up 1TB / Quad-core servers like the Tiger 600