And, yeah, this can snowball in both directions - you have enough ratio, so you comfortably download more and right away, so you can just keep seeding it and maintain the ratio. And vice versa - when your ratio is low, you download a few files, or hope for a freeleech - then, when it doesn't happen even your best attempts at seeding won't be enough.

When some people have 10x the upload speed or more, and have external IP addresses, meaning people can connect to them, giving them maybe 5x more peers, looks like only large, 50-100GB torrents can leave enough room for everyone.

but after that catastrophic data loss I finally have mirrored everything i get now in a system. Seedbox has improved this all drastically. i have dual 20TB mirrored now im good for awhile.

after getting seedbox I went on a splurge and downloaded now like 4tb+ of stuff ive wanted and now my ratio and buffer is huge.

Im done losing data.

But there's also the limit for simultaneous "leeching" - and it's a lot more restrictive. Even the best case scenario is 15 torrents at the same time

I don't think this is how it works. Right now, the search page shows that I'm leeching 38 torrents...although they are all torrents where I've chosen to download only some of the files, so the system counts me as still leeching because I haven't downloaded all of the material. I don't know if there's an upper limit on how many torrents can be in "leeching status," but if there is, it's greater than 38.

@frostycab makes a good point about striving for a high ratio for its own sake. I confess that did this for a while, after losing a hard drive of material and wanting to have enough buffer available to re-download material in case that happened again. My ratio has continued to climb since then, not because I want it to, but because I have a lot of material seeding and I leave my torrenting computer on 24/7. I should probably set some limits in my client to prevent too much "ratio overload," in order to allow other users more opportunity to upload.

@frostycab

But I guess some people would just be OK being a CDN for other people with the seedbox, and then download what they want from their home PC.

That is precisely the advice I was referring to as it deals with the original point of the topic

Even with seedboxes you don't necessary want to download videos you're not going to watch. But I guess some people would just be OK being a CDN for other people with the seedbox, and then download what they want from their home PC.

The buffer is how much you can download before you reach your own minimum ratio, which is never higher than 0.8.

Your total download on the site is used to set your Base Daily Limit for downloads. You also get extra download slots which are calculated by multiplying that BDL by how far you are above your minimum ratio. By the time you've downloaded more than 800Gb from the site your BDL is already 100, plus your extras for the ratio bonus, plus extras if you've uploaded in the past.... I doubt there are many people downloading that many torrents each and every day, even with a seedbox.

What I was trying to say is that a seedbox is a great tool for fixing a poor ratio, and for giving yourself breathing room, but people shouldn't feel like they need to chase ridiculously high ratios just for the sake of it. It's better to put yourself in a good position, and then if you have things that you want to seed then you can still seed them without the use of a seedbox, and saving some money in the process.

The buffer is only what's above 1 though. Going lower will limit the number of torrents you can leech simultaneously - meaning you can't seed them all either - making it even harder to maintain ratio.

@frostycab yeah about that, I might just keep it running till I reach like 10.0 ratio something absurdly high

While I wouldn't say not to do it, there was a discussion somewhere in the forums a long time ago about how much is too much when it comes to ratios.

There were some well though out arguments in there, but I seem to remember the best practice was agreed to be that while "artificial" methods like seedboxes give you a boost, once you've got a healthy download buffer then enjoy that and just seed normally. This shares seeding more effectively with other users who do also need to maintain their own ratios.

For example, I have a ratio of 1.172 right now. That means I have a download buffer of over 53TB. That represents about 40% of all my downloads over the last 17 years. If you look at it another way, if I keep up the same average amount of downloading and never upload so much as a single byte that buffer would last me another 7 years before I drop to my minimum 0.8. As such, there's no real benefit to putting effort into boosting my ratio.

Like I said, there's nothing stopping you going for the record if you like, but in reality there's not much point in chasing ratio just for the sake of it.

before I used to have to carefully calculate and pick and choose.

gamechanger.

Power User
This step is automated as well, after you meet 3 criteria:

• You have been a member on our site for at least 4 weeks
• You must have uploaded >40 GB
• Your ratio is >1.05

VIP User
This Step does not come automatically, it comes like a present. But there is at least one way not to reach this goal: apply with an admin for this promotion.

Just a couple of things to remember:

• Use the SB primarily for high-demand torrents, whether you want them personally or not. If you're grabbing something for yourself but there's little demand from other peers then you're better off downloading it directly and using the SB space for more popular files.

• Keep track of when your SB subscription ends and plan accordingly. If you have loads of stuff on there that you want to keep then make sure you allow yourself enough time to FTP it all to your local storage..

Interesting to see some boxes still working once you've passed your traffic limit. Might be worth a look at the terms and conditions to see exactly what they say and whether there's a second limit that cuts off completely or if the throttle you or whatever. I must admit that know just how much traffic you can generate I would only ever get a box with unlimited traffic.

I came across this too. I don't know if it's up to date or accurate, but some of you might find it useful if you choose to try:

@amyjia I'm in the usa and use this seed box it works fine for me