How it works?

Ask for information about Torrent Ratio Keeper and how it works
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TRKuser001
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How it works?

Post by TRKuser001 » Mon Jun 21, 2010 1:13 am

I have been trialling Torrent Ratio Keeper Monster edition and it seems to be what I want, but the lack of documentation is a problem. "How it works" is exactly what I wanted to know but all I can find is this forum, which doesn't answer the question either. I won't feel comfortable risking my private tracker memberships unless I know a lot more about what this is doing.

The first question is, how does TRK modify tracker reports? It doesn't use proxy settings like other ratio cheats. I don't think it could modify the operation of the torrent client directly. Does it hook into internet traffic like WinPcap or something?

The next question is what are these buttons that aren't explained anywhere? What is "Global Settings - None, Low, Medium, High"? Is that for setting the Windows process priority? What is Stop/Start? Does that stop it from modifying all tracker reports or does it just stop it from updating statistics? What exactly is Seeder Mode? Does that just set all downloaded data to 0, or does it report to the tracker that the file is 100% complete somehow?

I guess part of the problem is I don't fully understand what information is contained in a tracker report. Is it just the amount of data uploaded/downloaded since the last report, or is it the total data transferred since the start of the torrent, plus maybe other information like percent complete?

Does "Emulate Upload Problems" simply zero the upload amount, or does it do something else to indicate to the tracker there is a problem?

Finally, why are there increase/decrease slider settings on both the General and Advanced tabs? Do they do the same thing? Is there any difference between changing the settings on the General tab and selecting all trackers on the Advanced tab and changing the same settings?

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Re: How it works?

Post by administrator » Mon Jun 21, 2010 10:47 am

Hello,
The first question is, how does TRK modify tracker reports? It doesn't use proxy settings like other ratio cheats. I don't think it could modify the operation of the torrent client directly. Does it hook into internet traffic like WinPcap or something?
You are correct, it works like WinPcap to modify tracker reports.
The next question is what are these buttons that aren't explained anywhere? What is "Global Settings - None, Low, Medium, High"? Is that for setting the Windows process priority?
Global Settings buttons allow you to set 1 of the built-in modes for all trackers at once.
None button turn off any upload increase/download decrease for all trackers.
Low button sets download decrease to 0% and upload increase to 20%.
Medium button sets download decrease to 0% and upload increase to 75%.
High button sets download decrease to 20% and upload increase to 75%.
What is Stop/Start? Does that stop it from modifying all tracker reports or does it just stop it from updating statistics?
It stops from modifying all reports for all trackers (including Seeder Mode, Emulate Upload Problems, etc).
What exactly is Seeder Mode? Does that just set all downloaded data to 0, or does it report to the tracker that the file is 100% complete somehow?
The tracker "thinks" that you are seeding: you have all files and don't download anything.
Does "Emulate Upload Problems" simply zero the upload amount, or does it do something else to indicate to the tracker there is a problem?
Your torrent client will not report about uploaded traffic. There are no errors in tracker's logs and no information about the reason. Just no upload.
Finally, why are there increase/decrease slider settings on both the General and Advanced tabs? Do they do the same thing? Is there any difference between changing the settings on the General tab and selecting all trackers on the Advanced tab and changing the same settings?
When you change something on the General tab it affects all trackers, while on the Advanced tab you can modify settings for each tracker.

If you have any other questions feel free to ask. :)

TRKuser001
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Re: How it works?

Post by TRKuser001 » Mon Jun 21, 2010 1:00 pm

Thanks for the thorough reply. That answers everything I wanted to know about the operation of the program, but I would still like to know more about how uploaded and downloaded data is reported to a tracker. Does a report contain the incremental amount transferred since the last tracker update or is it a total amount? For instance, in a 100mb torrent, if the downloaded amount is 20mb at the time of one report and 30mb at the next, does the client report "another 10mb has been downloaded" or "I now have 30mb of this file"?

It seems like it must be incremental for a program that uses multipliers like this to be able to work. Yet you say that Seeder mode tells the tracker that all files are complete and this seems to indicate the report must contain total amounts.

If a tracker report contains total completed amounts that would seem to make it more dangerous to change any TRK settings once a torrent has started because then the change affects everything that came before as well. For instance, if you downloaded half of that 100mb file with Decrease Downloaded Traffic set to 0% then changed Decrease Downloaded Traffic to 50% it would look to the tracker as if at one point you had downloaded 50mb of the file but the next you only had 25mb of it. That would be the case even if you took the precaution of closing the client entirely while you made the change. But I guess it would be hard for a tracker to catch that without some sophisticated scripts because there are legitimate ways to lose data.

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Re: How it works?

Post by administrator » Mon Jun 21, 2010 3:08 pm

If you want to know tech details, you can check bittorrent specs:
# uploaded: The total amount uploaded (since the client sent the 'started' event to the tracker) in base ten ASCII. While not explicitly stated in the official specification, the concensus is that this should be the total number of bytes uploaded.
# downloaded: The total amount downloaded (since the client sent the 'started' event to the tracker) in base ten ASCII. While not explicitly stated in the official specification, the consensus is that this should be the total number of bytes downloaded.
If a tracker report contains total completed amounts that would seem to make it more dangerous to change any TRK settings once a torrent has started because then the change affects everything that came before as well. For instance, if you downloaded half of that 100mb file with Decrease Downloaded Traffic set to 0% then changed Decrease Downloaded Traffic to 50% it would look to the tracker as if at one point you had downloaded 50mb of the file but the next you only had 25mb of it.
TRK handles this and several other problems well. It will not decrease traffic in this case. We recommend to launch and setup TRK before starting the torrent client, but if you start torrent client first, its ok too, but not recommended to turn on Seeder mode or Emulate Upload Problems, it can be suspicious for the tracker.

TRKuser001
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Re: How it works?

Post by TRKuser001 » Tue Jun 22, 2010 4:30 am

Great replies. Thanks. This is obviously a well thought out program. I will probably purchase soon.

I have a suggestion. In the Expert Settings you should have another check box for "Disconnect Tracker" or "Block Tracker Communications" or whatever you want to call it. This would be different then setting Decrease Downloaded Traffic to 100% and checking Emulate Upload Problems because with those settings, although the tracker doesn't think anything is happening, it still sees you are active. The new check box would make it look like you weren't online at all.

That way it wouldn't look like you were connected for possibly days or longer just doing nothing, which would look suspicious on an active torrent. I know that would also mean you couldn't get any peer lists but the idea is you would only press it after you were well seeded.

You can kind of do this by deleting the tracker list from within the client, but that interrupts the transfer and then relies on the cached peer list and you don't always get them all back. Plus, it's a hassle having keep editing the tracker list if you want to restore them later. The suggested addition would do the same thing with a single click.

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Re: How it works?

Post by administrator » Tue Jun 22, 2010 7:27 pm

I have a suggestion. In the Expert Settings you should have another check box for "Disconnect Tracker" or "Block Tracker Communications" or whatever you want to call it. This would be different then setting Decrease Downloaded Traffic to 100% and checking Emulate Upload Problems because with those settings, although the tracker doesn't think anything is happening, it still sees you are active. The new check box would make it look like you weren't online at all.
We will add this feature in the next release.

TRKuser001
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Re: How it works?

Post by TRKuser001 » Tue Jun 22, 2010 10:53 pm

Thanks

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Re: How it works?

Post by administrator » Fri Jun 25, 2010 2:55 pm

We've updated TRK. Please click Help\Check for updates or download the latest version from the download page:
http://www.torrentratiokeeper.com/download/

TRKuser001
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Re: How it works?

Post by TRKuser001 » Mon Jun 28, 2010 7:47 pm

That was fast. Well done.

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