I have been having some trouble with the priority system.

I was downloading 5 torrents and there was one I wanted to download first. I set it to "Above Normal" priority, while the others were set to Normal.  My assumption was that the "Above Normal" torrent would consume most of my downstream, while the others slowed down considerably, since all 5 of them were well seeded on a private tracker. Although the AN torrent did seem to download faster (1.5 MB/s compared to 800k-1MB on others), it did not have the effect I was expecting.  I tried pausing the 4 Normal torrents and the torrent I wanted first jumped up to my normal max (3.6 MB/s) so it appears that my download cap was not the limiting factor.

I am a bit confused by how the priority system works now since I assumed any torrent in a greater priority group (i.e. AN > N) should get precedence.

Thanks

From your description I think everything works as it should. Maybe try using high priority instead of above normal, see if it makes enough difference in download speed. To complete a torrent as fast as you can, I suggest queuing the rest of downloads. Why download all 5 at the same time if you can max your bandwidth with just one?

I agree that it made sense to just queue them up, but I was more trying to better understand the priority system in general.  I noticed in the help that priority was being referred to as a percentage in one area ( http://support.tixati.com/Transfers_View)  and made no mention of the naming scheme the actual UI uses.  Does this mean Ultra-High = 200%, Normal = 100% etc?

Also, I noticed that you can set up priority for categories, but it does not affect the actual priority setting on the transfers in that category.  Does this mean that bandwidth is divided up first by category, then by transfers in the category, and finally by files in the transfer?

The situation I am in right now is that I am seeding torrents on two separate private trackers.  One I have a high ratio at already, but the second I am still working on improving.  I would like to be able to allocate my bandwidth so that 1/3 goes to tracker A and 2/3 to tracker B.  Obviously this would be a rough estimate, but I just want to know if this is something tixati is meant to be able to do.

Also, is there a way to customize the bandwidth limits list?  Right now it has a range from 1KB/s to 100 KB/s with several steps in between, but I want to know if i can set a limit to a higher level than 100 KB/s.

Thanks for your time

This is from my observations only. I may be wrong.

Help may be outdated. I don't use Categories, they would be great for that but I believe they don't work as they should.

Priority Groups and Peer Allowance work different. Peer Allowance set to 2x will allow all peers from a torrent to get twice as much download and upload bandwidth as peers with Normal Peer Allowance. Above Normal Priority Group will get twice as much overall download and upload bandwidth as Normal Priority Group (High will get 4 times more, Very High - 8 times more).

You can set both Priority Group and Peer Allowance for a torrent. Priority Group is the most important, Peer Allowance works "inside" each Priority Group. I mean that changing Peer Allowance does not affect amount of bandwidth reserved for Priority Group, it only balances bandwidth inside Priority Group.

For upload bandwidth the most important setting is "Outgoing Seeding/Trading %" (Bandwidth View > Advanced). By default 75% off all upload bandwidth is reserved for trading and 25% for seeding. Notice that peers in downloading torrents with blue LC status (status description says "Local Not Choking Remote (Charity)") are included in Seeding %.

File Priorities are not connected with Bandwidth Priorities although they share the same names.

So for two private trackers A and B, to be sure (whenever it's possible) that tracker A will get 1/3 and B 2/3, you should use Bandwidth Priorities. All torrents from A should be one "step" below torrents from B. For example torrents from B may be Normal Bandwidth Priority and torrents from A Below Normal. You may ask why don't use Normal Peer Allowance for B and 50% Peer Allowance for A? It affects peers, so if there will be 4 peers total from A and 1 peer from B leeching from you, B peer will get 2x more than any A peer, but overall A tracker will get 2x more upload than B (there are more peers from A). With Bandwidth Priorities set, as I described above, B tracker will get 2x more than A, peers numbers doesn't matter.

You can customize Bandwidth list, use Customize Menu... at the bottom of the list, try other presets first.

Your post made me curious so I checked more closely. I was wrong about Priority Groups, it's like this:
Ultra High 54x (of Normal)
Very High 18x
High 6x
Above Normal 2x
not 2x, 4x, 8x.

Ah, thanks for that explanation.  That cleared it up quite a bit.

I also noticed the "Customize Menu..." option staring me in the face shortly after I posted my last message and felt a little silly about asking that :)

It seems with that new information, and having customized the menu to allow me to throttle certain specific categories to the desired level (that feature of category bandwidth seems to work perfectly), it does what I need it to.

Thanks again

Pete... from what source springeth this information?

Ultra High 54x (of Normal)
Very High 18x
High 6x
Above Normal 2x

If each stage is a 2/3 1/3 split, then it seems to be simple binary and you were right the first time I think.

iow AN gets 2xN, H = 2xAN (4N), VH=2xH (8N), UH=2xVH (16N)

My cursory search of the support pages comes up totally empty as to "Priority Group" application and description. All that is shown for "Priority" seems to relate to settings for "Peer Allowance"

We have discussed this topic already ;) check for more detail here: http://forum.tixati.com/support/764/

Pete: I know WE have discussed it here on the forum. But as I mentioned, I can find nothing on the official support pages regarding Priority Groups etc.

And I certainly read and re-read that thread you referenced over the last couple weeks as I started thinking about this. And I was asking what you based your information on. Does it come from communication with a higher authority or is it from your own testing and observation?

My renewed interest in this topic is because of the new queue management system.

As near as I can tell, the initial implementation per v2.15/16 is to open extra slots to rotate torrents on standby in to test for peer demand. If found, then any current torrent without demand would be sent to standby and replaced with a torrent that is currently in demand. And that seems to work quite well at that level. And yes, if a torrent that is set for priority gets assigned a slot, then the BW preferences kick in.

So IF a AN priority torrents gets activated, it will get special BW allocation. But what if it doesn't get assigned a slot? It's AN priority is then meaningless as it is idle, on standby.

I am suggesting adding the Category Priority Group factor into the slot assignment algorithm. There are 4 priority levels above (and below) "Normal" and those could be very useful for this purpose (irrespective of how they might be currently used for BW allocation once activated).

If I have 1000 torrents to seed, I could imagine these priority settings to give slot assignment preferences to 100 select torrents:

10 Ultra High
20 Very High
30 High
40 Above Normal
900 Normal

If I want to open say 16 UL slots, then I would like those to go first to the torrents I have given priority status to (as long as they demonstrate peer demand).

Ultra high would get 1/2 of the total number of slots set, in this case 8, leaving 8 for the rest.
Very High would get 1/2 of the remaining 8, iow 4
High would get again 1/2 of the remaining 4, 2
Above Normal would get 1
Leaving 1 slot for the 900 Normal priority torrents to vie for.

If the torrents set to a particular Priority are tested and found without current demand, they go to standby and slots for that category would then be made available to the next lower Priority.  As an example, opening 32 UL slots:

Ultra high would get 1/2 of the total number of slots set (32/2) so 16, leaving 16 for all lower Priority Groups.
Very High would get 1/2 of the remaining 16, 8
etc ....


Since there are only 10 torrents set to Ultra High, even if all were in demand they wouldn't fill the 16 allocated slots for that level, so 6 would be made available to the Very High group, giving that level effectively 14 slots which could be all utilized if the 20 torrents set to the level are all in demand. If not then again any unused slots would be open to the next lower Priority Group, High. etc.

If the 10% of the torrents set to any level of Priority Group above "Normal" cannot depend on getting a slot (at which time the BW priority would be applied), then the advantage is severely marginalized.

I have written in that topic: "This is from my observations only, I may be wrong." So far my observations match.

I saw that you mentioned that. But also noted you are one of the most knowledgeable users on this forum, so was suspecting you might have some back-channel for information that is not so well known.