Switching to the fastest user

Archived discussion about features (predating the use of Bugzilla as a bug and feature tracker)

Moderator: Moderators

Locked
Wisp
Posts: 218
Joined: 2003-04-01 10:58

Switching to the fastest user

Post by Wisp » 2004-11-21 12:53

Alot of times DC switches over to a source with a very low speed (<2KB/s) when i'm not looking while there are dozens of high speed sources available. This way, DC could waste a whole night/day of downloading from a lowspeed user while the file could be finished if it picked a high speed user.

I know there has been spoken a lot about this issue, a popular suggestion was to automatically drop slow users. In my opinion there is a much simpeler solution. If DC has downloaded a filelist, it can calculate the avarage speed of that user. That avarage speed should be saved along with the username, when DC has to switch over to another source, it should automatically pick the one with the highest avarage speed. The avarage speed could be updated when DC actually is downloading a file from the user.

I hope this suggestion wasn't posted before, but I think it's worth consideration.

BSOD2600
Forum Moderator
Posts: 503
Joined: 2003-01-27 18:47
Location: USA
Contact:

Post by BSOD2600 » 2004-11-21 14:07

A mod by xhost was made that has this type of feature (and it was rejected from being patched into DC++). In the DC++ client table, look for the clients with 'download limiting' for the clients which have this feature.

Wisp
Posts: 218
Joined: 2003-04-01 10:58

Post by Wisp » 2004-11-21 14:11

I think 'download limiting' is something else than i'm suggesting.

BSOD2600
Forum Moderator
Posts: 503
Joined: 2003-01-27 18:47
Location: USA
Contact:

Post by BSOD2600 » 2004-11-21 14:18

Ok, so I didn't name the featuret properly. Here is the original post by xhost+ for what you're talking about and a screenshot. The mods listed in the client table, have changed the workings around a little, but the idea remains the same.

Why not download one of the clients, try it out, and then see if thats what you're getting after.

Wisp
Posts: 218
Joined: 2003-04-01 10:58

Post by Wisp » 2004-11-21 14:28

BSOD2600 wrote:Ok, so I didn't name the featuret properly. Here is the original post by xhost+ for what you're talking about and a screenshot. The mods listed in the client table, have changed the workings around a little, but the idea remains the same..
That suggestion is completely different. What he suggested is to drop users when the speed is below a settable value, what I suggested is to remember the speed of the users after downloading the filelist, and then to start downloading from the fastest user.

BSOD2600
Forum Moderator
Posts: 503
Joined: 2003-01-27 18:47
Location: USA
Contact:

Post by BSOD2600 » 2004-11-21 20:23

Ahh, well why not submit your idea to the feature tracker?

PseudonympH
Forum Moderator
Posts: 366
Joined: 2004-03-06 02:46

Post by PseudonympH » 2004-11-22 16:55

I could swear it's in there already. Or maybe that's just the 500 people that have posted it in the forum...

Wisp
Posts: 218
Joined: 2003-04-01 10:58

Post by Wisp » 2004-11-22 18:42

PseudonympH wrote:I could swear it's in there already. Or maybe that's just the 500 people that have posted it in the forum...
can you give an example of a similar request?

Wisp
Posts: 218
Joined: 2003-04-01 10:58

Post by Wisp » 2004-11-23 14:43

are there any developers online? i like to know what they think about this request :D

Gasman1015
Posts: 184
Joined: 2003-05-26 11:29
Location: UK

Post by Gasman1015 » 2004-11-23 16:58

Wisp wrote:
PseudonympH wrote:I could swear it's in there already. Or maybe that's just the 500 people that have posted it in the forum...
can you give an example of a similar request?
Have you forgotten this one, you commented in the discussion.

http://dcplusplus.sourceforge.net/forum ... g+filelist

and another:

http://dcplusplus.sourceforge.net/forum ... g+filelist
Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else.

Wisp
Posts: 218
Joined: 2003-04-01 10:58

Post by Wisp » 2004-11-23 20:19

Gasman1015 wrote:Have you forgotten this one, you commented in the discussion.

http://dcplusplus.sourceforge.net/forum ... g+filelist

and another:

http://dcplusplus.sourceforge.net/forum ... g+filelist
Both suggestions are different, they both want to improve downloading speed by using faster users, but they want to use a different method.
I think my suggestion is the simplest one.

To summarize my request:
  1. After downloading the filelist of a user, DC++ remembers the avarage speed of that transfer and saves it along with the username.
  2. DC++ makes a list of the alternate users, ordered by downloading speed (fastest first).
  3. When DC++ has to switch to another user, DC++ picks the first (fastest) user on the list, if there are no slots available, DC++ picks the second user from the list, and so on.
I haven't seen this before in other posts, they're mostly about dropping slow users, in my suggestion, you keep the slow users but lower their priority so that they are only used when there are no faster users available.

Wisp
Posts: 218
Joined: 2003-04-01 10:58

Post by Wisp » 2004-11-23 21:18

In addition to the previous post, I would like to show how I imagined this feature.

If you select a file in the download queue, you get the following 'source manager' (or whatever you would call it)

Image

When a user is added as an alternative, the user is visible in this list which is ordered default by speed, but the user can change that. This way you can easilty select multiple users to delete. In the right-click menu you can have options like "add user to favorites", "connect to the hub", "copy nick/ip to clipboard", etc.

Maybe it's a good idea to also have an exclusion list in the same window where you can move users to (if you really don't want to download from them).

Gasman1015
Posts: 184
Joined: 2003-05-26 11:29
Location: UK

Post by Gasman1015 » 2004-11-24 02:32

Wisp wrote:
Gasman1015 wrote:Have you forgotten this one, you commented in the discussion.

http://dcplusplus.sourceforge.net/forum ... g+filelist

and another:

http://dcplusplus.sourceforge.net/forum ... g+filelist
Both suggestions are different, they both want to improve downloading speed by using faster users, but they want to use a different method.
I think my suggestion is the simplest one.

To summarize my request:
  1. After downloading the filelist of a user, DC++ remembers the avarage speed of that transfer and saves it along with the username.
  2. DC++ makes a list of the alternate users, ordered by downloading speed (fastest first).
  3. When DC++ has to switch to another user, DC++ picks the first (fastest) user on the list, if there are no slots available, DC++ picks the second user from the list, and so on.
I haven't seen this before in other posts, they're mostly about dropping slow users, in my suggestion, you keep the slow users but lower their priority so that they are only used when there are no faster users available.
The principle is the same, also take note of GargoyleMT's comments.
Scanning other sources for speed would involve downloading portions of the file. If you're doing that, you should save those portions not to be wasteful. At that point, you've already designed multi-source downloading.

I'm not going to look into this at all, and hope that it's determined that multisource downloading will go in DC++.

These source micro-management features will all go away when you can download from more than one person.
Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else.

GargoyleMT
DC++ Contributor
Posts: 3212
Joined: 2003-01-07 21:46
Location: .pa.us

Post by GargoyleMT » 2004-12-12 16:23

Wisp wrote:That suggestion is completely different.
It is worded differently, but is the same type of code underneath. The only difference is the logic that controls when DC++ would switch to a different user.

Locked