'UK Nova is closed'

[MonkeyDrummer]

How bad does your share ratio have to be before they kick you off?

I'm pretty new to this torrenting lark, and because a lot of the stuff I was downloading never had anybody leeching from me, my ratio has gone down to about 0.6.

They won't kick you off at 0.6.  There are people on there with 0.05 ratio that still seem to be there, but it's them rather than you who are in danger of being kicked off.  Personally I'm at a ratio of 0.3 (which I've been trying to build up very slowly, but it ain't easy) and I think I'm fairly safe for the moment.

Doesn't everyone just leave there download/upload open until you reach 1?

[Slackboy]

Is there any advantage to having a ratio of 3.0 rather than 2.0? I mean it does it give you a higher priority so that someone with a 3.0 ratio has a faster download speed than someone with 2.0?

[Santa's Boyfriend]

Doesn't everyone just leave there download/upload open until you reach 1?

I would if people continually downloaded something, yes.  But they don't.

[Rubbish Monkey]

ahh ha i've just managed to re-register.

I never had a problem with my ratio on UKNova. Over at Oinks its quite tough to keep your ratio up with 78,078  seeders and only 3,915 leechers (at the moment)

[chav]

3 golden rules for a good ratio:

1. Try not to join swarms at a late stage. As mook noted the later you join, the less there will be to upload. If possible, jump on an interesting torrent as soon as you can.
2. Leave your PC on as much as you can - 24/7 really is the only way. 12K/s uploaded over 24hrs should equal just over 1GB a day. Do that a few days on the run and your ratio will improve. Leave the client running even if yfou have nothing to download.
3. This is the kicker - set your download speed to be equal to your upload speed. A harsh one to take, but the maths fans amongst will note that this method means your ratio NEVER goes below 1.

There are some benefits when you hit 1.05 IIRC, access to extra forums, nfo viewing, stuff like that. I think that's as good as it gets. I don't know how you get your board status changed from "Power User" to something unique - get in with the clique I guess, like most things.

I have a spare UKNova account if anyone is desperate - those with reciprocal invites to oink or POTUK or anyone else will of course get preferential treatment.

[Timmay]

3. This is the kicker - set your download speed to be equal to your upload speed. A harsh one to take, but the maths fans amongst will note that this method means your ratio NEVER goes below 1.

Yeah, fine in practice, but in theory (that's what most maths is after all) what if no one downloads from you? You can download a GB for the file(s) from other people, but if no one downloads from you, your ratio is shite times infinity.

[mook]

Doesn't everyone just leave there download/upload open until you reach 1?

I would if people continually downloaded something, yes.  But they don't.

That's what happened to me, I grabbed a few of the Jerry Sadowitz shows and it seemed that no one at all was grabbing them from me. I left them seeding for a couple of days, still nothing so ended the torrent.

I know I asked over in the techy thread (Ta Homer J for the reply) Can someone recommend a good torrent client. I'm using Bitlord at the moment, and I reckon I must have it set up wrong, I'm downloading at about 14kbs and uploading at 26kbs on a 2meg connection. The file is the second series of AD  and seems pretty healthy so it should be coming in faster than that surely?

[lazyhour]

You know, there's no harm in leaving a torrent seeding for weeks and weeks.  That's what I do on torrents that initially have no-one downloading.  Eventually, I always get up to a 1:1 ratio on that torrent.  Always.  Leaving a not-so-popular torrent seeding for 1 or 2 days is pretty pointless.  Why the rush to stop seeding?  Just leave it be, and if there's no activity on it then it won't affect your connection speed anyway, so there are absolutely no drawbacks.

Getting a good ratio is incredibly easy on UkNova, moreso than almost any other torrent site I've joined.  Just leave it seeding!

[lardboy]

Or of course, you could become an uploader.  If you've got an old VHS collection knocking around and can transfer it to digital format, then you will almost certainly find something that people want.  Everything you upload goes straight towards improving your ratio.  Oh, and make sure that you're connectable (which I'm not thanks to my new BB provider) so that everyone can download from you if they need to.  There's details on their forum as to how to do both those things.

The torrent of Hysteria 2 that I bunged up on Monday night has sorted my ratio right out, although it'll be a long while before I get it up to silly levels as I was downloading for a year or so before I realised my ratio was completely bolloxed.

Oh, and definitely leave your torrents open for a while as there are often people who pick things up after the initial rush and you can sometimes be the only seeder.

[surreal]

Its also much easier to keep your ratio above 1.0 when it gets there, due to the amount you have to upload compared to your download.  So the best advice is just find something popular and jump on it and leave it running for a few days to get your ratio up and you're sorted.  Might be best to start with a small file, like a radio show or something, so it downloads quickly then you only have to upload a small amount... if you start downoading something a couple of gigs you'll be there forever trying to give it back.

[chav]

Don't get too excited though, since bittorrent is very efficient at sharing. For example, I uploading the Making Grange Hill a fortnight ago, and around 20-25 people grabbed full copies. Yet I only uploaded 2 x the file size. But yes, uploading stuff will be good for your ratio. Encoding is such a faff though, only to be taken on by the strong-willed.

I use Azureus - it hogs memory like nobody's business but does everything you need, and has lots of features which rotate torrents round and ensure that you're always seeding whan you need to seed. I don't have experience of other clients but I'd imagine that Azureus is hard to beat in this regard. You just leave all your completed files as seeding, and it will start and stop those that are requested by others. With this method, your torrents will get to 1, if there are other people around.

If you are seeding yot nobody is joining you, you might have a technical problem. Have a look on the UKNova forums for posts mentioning 'connectable' (you must be 'connectable = yes')

[mook]

Might be best to start with a small file, like a radio show or something, so it downloads quickly then you only have to upload a small amount... if you start downoading something a couple of gigs you'll be there forever trying to give it back.

Surely it depends on the total amount of stuff you've downloaded in total compared to what you've uploaded. Or am I missing something here?

[butnut]

I've never got my connectable to =yes. I think it's my modem as it doesn't have the correct things to change when you log into it. But although I probably don't connect to as many people as I could I don't really notice too many problems with speeds or my ratio. I just leave a torrent running until it goes over 1:1. Sometimes this does mean leaving it there a week, but eventually enough fish come and bite.

[surreal]

Surely it depends on the total amount of stuff you've downloaded in total compared to what you've uploaded. Or am I missing something here?

I was just thinking if  the first thing you grab is, say, 175mb it won't take long for you to grab that fully and start solely uploading, so if it takes and hour to grab and another hour to upload 175mb back fully, that would have you at 1.0 wouldn't it?

Or am I just missing the point somewhere?  Anyone?  Anyone? Bueller....?

[gazzyk1ns]

Lazyhour's right, just leave stuff seeding permanently, even if you're going to be opening other torrents too. The only thing to remember is to restrict your upload speed to about 80-85% of the maximum whilst you're at your PC, otherwise browsing/downloading will slow significantly.

If any of you are still struggling, and you've grabbed the Blue Jams, then jump on that, it's still maxing out my upstream when I let it. I think it reaches its TTL in about 10 days though.

[Suttonpubcrawl]

I'm in America at the moment and I left my computer seeding two torrents while I was away. One's on UK Nova and that's uploaded about 20gb so far, the other is on Oink and has uploaded about 1.5gb. As someone already said on this thread, Oink is very tricky to get a good ratio on. I've left things seeding for weeks and had absolutely no one download anything from me. The trick on there seems to be to upload a new torrent, I've done it a few times because uploading an album is much easier than uploading a video.

[My Giddy Aunt]

I might be being a bit thick here. But im knew to torrenting...
If i switch my computer off at bedtime half way through downloading a file, do i have to go back and find the exact same original link to get it going again? And if not then how do i avoid this?

Ta/

[mook]

No, just open up your client and it will re-start again.

[Mildly Diverting]

Aaaaghhh! Tell me it's only me who can't get to it.

Edit - Sheesh. Me bad.

[TOCMFIC]

So on the first page it says "Please don't bump year old threads" and then someone goes and does it.

It was gone. It's back now. Yeesh...

[Robot Devil]

See everyone next September!

[iain]

I'm having a bit of a problem with uknova myself. I forgot my password and when i get it sent to my email account i get the first email with a link, and it takes me to a uknova page which says "The new account details have been mailed to iain_uk@hotmail.com. Please allow a few minutes for the mail to arrive." It never arrives though!

[Robot Devil]

Spam folder?

[iain]

Na ive looked there, and have tried over a few times now. Annoying because there doesnt seem to be any way of contacting them. I would just wait but it seems odd how the first email gets to me right away.

[Suttonpubcrawl]

This thread has only been posted to in the month of September, but over the course of two years. Go on, check back, there are posts for September 2004, September 2005 and now September 2006, but no other months! I'm going to bump this thread again in September 2007.

[Tokyo Sexwhale]

I'm going to bump this thread next month, just to spoil it.

[Suttonpubcrawl]

You'll forget!

[Steve Lampkins]

It's September though? Neva forget!

[Carlos Tevez]

UK Nova's a bag of shit; never let's me sign up.

[Banana Woofwoof]

Have you been naughty?

My friend Dickon is using my account since I abandoned it.  I use mininova more than UKNova anyway.