[StudMuffin]

Of course my goal is to maximize my download speed. I'm also interested in being a good customer to my ISP so I've restricted my upload speed to 10 KB/s. My number of max connections is set to 5; I figure it is better to have fewer people downloading at a somewhat reasonable speed. Is that good logic?

Are there guidelines for upload speed per upload connection? 17% failed sessions seems poor. I could experiment. I've been running this way for 5+ days it would be nice to get other people's settings.

(Yes, I searched for this topic. If I missed a pre-existing thread my apologies. Does the search tool require explicit AND statements for keyword searches?)

[jestheonlyone]

hi

StudMuffin, on Feb 20 2008, 10:13 PM, said:

Of course my goal is to maximize my download speed. I'm also interested in being a good customer to my ISP so I've restricted my upload speed to 10 KB/s.

You cannot maximize your DL speed if you minimize your UL speed... (remember: emule is a sharing program...)

edit: of course, if your ISP does not like p2p, you're free to minimize both

StudMuffin, on Feb 20 2008, 10:13 PM, said:

My number of max connections is set to 5; I figure it is better to have fewer people downloading at a somewhat reasonable speed. Is that good logic?

The max number of connections is not related to the number of UL (or DL) slots. You need many connections to communicate with the sources, queued clients, servers...
With only 5 connections, you should get very very poor results

edit: ~200-250 max connections should be enough in most cases, and low enough for most routers.

StudMuffin, on Feb 20 2008, 10:13 PM, said:

Are there guidelines for upload speed per upload connection?

With the official client, the upload speed per upload slot is around 3-5kB/s, and you have no direct control over this (although this might be slightly affected by some settings or fine-tuning)
So the number of upload slots is directly related to your upload speed limit.

StudMuffin, on Feb 20 2008, 10:13 PM, said:

17% failed sessions seems poor.

Not that bad (even almost good, actually): You're not responsible of ALL the failed sessions. Sometimes, the other clients, or their ISP, are the culprits. And you can't do anything about this.

StudMuffin, on Feb 20 2008, 10:13 PM, said:

(Yes, I searched for this topic. If I missed a pre-existing thread my apologies. Does the search tool require explicit AND statements for keyword searches?)

You didn't search the help files, did you?

This post has been edited by jestheonlyone: 20 February 2008 - 10:24 PM

[StudMuffin]

Thanks for the reply. It is educational but I don't like all the answers. Color me difficult

First, I've dealt directly with my "small" ISP. I intentionally went with a "small" ISP rather than a large corporation and I think it has benefited me over the last ~7 years. They've helped with technical problems and look the other way when I resell some of my bandwidth over WIFI. As such, that makes me an ISP and I'm interested in keeping my customers happy. I also have a heightened awareness of potential bandwidth abuses. My ISP doesn't cap my bandwidth or block ports and I'd like to stay on their good side as well as be a generally a good neighbor. (That sounds a little like a flame, it isn't supposed to. 10KB just feels right in my circumstance.)

I'm aware that eMule is a sharing program. I'm willing to play by the rules and do my share of uploads in order to get the downloads I want. Lately my UL:DL ratio is 9:1 and my upload bandwidth is always at my limit. It is just a little disappointing that I'm only 10% complete with a large (4GB) download over 5 days. I'd like to minimize any inefficiencies that I can.

I still think 17% upload inefficiency is poor. And seems like 5 connections is ~okay for 10 KB/s but there's room for improvement. Typically I see four upoads: 3KB, 3KB, 3KB and 0.15KB. Why even allow the 0.15KB slot for an average 6MB download. Isn't the probability of successful completion relatively small? If I increase my number of max connections I'll get maybe 10 or 20 uploads at a time and the failed upload sessions will increase. (I'll try it anyway.)

I've been experimenting with the scheduler and changing my upload and download speeds during off-peak times. Perhaps I should change my max connections during off peak times as well.

[Nissenice]

StudMuffin, on Feb 21 2008, 04:54 AM, said:

I'm aware that eMule is a sharing program. I'm willing to play by the rules and do my share of uploads in order to get the downloads I want. Lately my UL:DL ratio is 9:1 and my upload bandwidth is always at my limit. It is just a little disappointing that I'm only 10% complete with a large (4GB) download over 5 days. I'd like to minimize any inefficiencies that I can.

It sounds to me that you are downloading a single file with just a few sources. Though you can use eMule that way it is recommendable to download several files concurrently.

StudMuffin, on Feb 21 2008, 04:54 AM, said:

If I increase my number of max connections I'll get maybe 10 or 20 uploads at a time and the failed upload sessions will increase. (I'll try it anyway.)

I think something is wrong here. It shouldn't behave like this. Are you sure you're using the official client downloaded from the official site?

[niclights]

17% is good as Nissenice said. Commonly you might see up to 25% failure before worrying. Remember that the problems may lie at the other clients configuration/connection.

Regardless, it is UL Limit that will affect this for the most part (to account for overheads). Since you are limiting way below your bandwidth this should not be a problem. A straight line on upload graph indicates good stable, high quality uploads.


But, as Nissenice also originally pointed out, you total misunderstand the meaning of 'connections'.

These do not only determine actual open, transferring slots, but also (crucially!) the connections required to contact and maintain queue positions. Setting to 5-20 is way too low & will make it almost impossible to function correctly. Doing this will certainly give you bad download speed.
Imagine an average popularity file with 200 found sources. Your client must contact these and then maintain queue position. The rate of contacting is defined by Max New Connections/5sec (options/extended). The maximum number of contacts is Max Connections. Emule will attempt to contact (re-ask) at 30min intervals.

The limiting factor with simultaneous connections is hardware & operating system. XP can handle approx 2000 but older OS's have much lower capability. Since most users will now be on XP or later it is modem/router that defines the values.


From experience we know 200 is a reasonable approximate maximum for home routers. Thus Max Connections 200.

To avoid this limit ever being reached (assuming 200 sources total or more) we set Max New Connections/5sec 10. Although it is impossible to accurately predict behaviour, this is proven to work.

Finally, since the client contacts every 30mins, this means a maximum of 3600 sources can theoretically be contacted at this rate before the process begins again. Any more sources would be wasted and never contacted.

So, to be safe we recommend 3000 sources max total when using the above values. Note that there is no actual setting for total sources in the official client & this must be policed manually.



Symptoms of overloaded hardware will be difficulty browsing followed ultimately by complete loss of internet (router crash).
If hardware is capable you can set a higher Max Conns, allowing a higher rate and therefore more sources in total.


I hope that made things clearer!

This post has been edited by niclights: 21 February 2008 - 03:26 PM

[Nissenice]

niclights, on Feb 21 2008, 04:25 PM, said:

17% is good as Nissenice said.
[...]
But, as Nissenice also originally pointed out, you total misunderstand the meaning of 'connections'.

Thanks for your confidence in me, unfortunately I think you are mixing me and jestheonlyone up.

[jestheonlyone]

StudMuffin, on Feb 21 2008, 04:54 AM, said:

when I resell some of my bandwidth over WIFI

In this case, obviously, you need to keep reasonable settings in emule

StudMuffin, on Feb 21 2008, 04:54 AM, said:

I'm aware that eMule is a sharing program. I'm willing to play by the rules and do my share of uploads in order to get the downloads I want. Lately my UL:DL ratio is 9:1 and my upload bandwidth is always at my limit. It is just a little disappointing that I'm only 10% complete with a large (4GB) download over 5 days. I'd like to minimize any inefficiencies that I can.

If you cannot / don't want to upload at high speed, the only way to get rather good results is to share only a few files (preferably related to what you're interested in) and to download only a very few files at once (or even only one, if this is a large file)
(-> credit system...)

StudMuffin, on Feb 21 2008, 04:54 AM, said:

I still think 17% upload inefficiency is poor.

I can assure you that this is far from bad (although not perfect)
My cumulative stats are (over 4 years, with various bandwidths):
16.46% failed UL sessions
39.9% failed DL sessions!
Session stats:
7.43% failed UL session
no DL session... (but usually around 10-15%, I think)

StudMuffin, on Feb 21 2008, 04:54 AM, said:

And seems like 5 connections is ~okay for 10 KB/s but there's room for improvement. Typically I see four upoads

So you need at least 4 connections just for your UL slots. With a 5 limit, you can only download - at most! - from one source at once.
(Don't forget that you have to connect regularly to the sources to know your QR, to the sources and servers to search for sources, and that all your queued clients contact you regurlarly to ask for QR or sources...)
Maybe you don't need 200 connections (my mule seldom exceeds ~30-40 peak connections, and the average value is usually below 20... But I only share and usually download very very rare files; And I do not download much...
And anyway, my cumulative peak connections is still 229 )

StudMuffin, on Feb 21 2008, 04:54 AM, said:

Typically I see four upoads: 3KB, 3KB, 3KB and 0.15KB. Why even allow the 0.15KB slot for an average 6MB download.

- This is in no way related to your 6Mbit/s download speed, but only to your 10kByte/s UL limit
- the 4th "standby" slot is used to optimize your mule: if ever one of the 3 other clients disconnects or slows down and the other ones cannot fill your bandwidth, the 4th client will instantly download at a higher speed (otherwise, the first client in your waiting queue would be started, but maybe he won't reply at once, or maybe he won't reply at all, but there's a timeout before the next client can be started -> bandwidth waste )
Standby slots are only used when the UL limit is low

[StudMuffin]

Excellent information. I'm glad I asked. I boosted my connection limit and the dl performance is better. eMule seems that it would run fine without a max connections. Btw, I'm running 0.48a, supposedly official release. I've also got a Cisco 678 DSL router (circa 1999). The router is old-school but I think it can handle any number of connections that eMule would want.

Basically, here's what I learned on how to "nice" my eMule for my bandwidth.
- Leave max connections at something high, 200-250. eMule will only utilize something in the range of 50.
- Set max dl to something pretty high (1/2 my actual available). Most of the time it isn't the limiting factor.
- Set max ul judiciously. This will be the limiting factor and eMule will basically operate at this max value.

Finally, my criticism that 17% failed sessions might be out of scope for eMule. I'm an engineer and if one of my designs had 17% failure, people would be unhappy and/or dead. There's not much worse than unhappy AND dead! For an application like eMule the consequences of a failure rate in that range isn't too bad. I could recommend that the reported statistics give reference values... but that would only be a nice to have.

Thanks again for the helpful replies.

[Dick_Manitoba]

If you are an engineer, then it should be a simple problem for you to figure out what happens when inexperienced computerists are given a program which requires fine tuning You can attribute most of the failed uploads and downloads to throttled or improperly configured clients. So many ISPs trying to expand their networks on the cheap, and selling to people who think a broadband connection equals the capability to make anything possible on their computer.

This post has been edited by Dick_Manitoba: 22 February 2008 - 03:23 PM

[jestheonlyone]

StudMuffin, on Feb 22 2008, 03:46 PM, said:

- Leave max connections at something high, 200-250. eMule will only utilize something in the range of 50.

The actual number of connections depend mainly on what your are downloading (-> number of sources) and what you are sharing (-> number of clients reaquesting your files).
And there's often some higher "peak connections" when you add a new popular file to download and/or when you start emule

The average and peak connections are shown in the statistics (connection > session > general)