Last Active: Aug 24, 2014
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Sorry if this is in the wrong section... or if this has been talked about already, but I tried searching and couldn't find anything that covers this.
Anyway, I've always kept my download speed low thinking that it won't raise any flags. The drawback of this, of course, is that the torrent downloads takes longer to finish downloading
My friend mentioned that they let it go as fast as possible so they can get in and get out.
My question is which one is safer? Would the ISP or whoever may be monitoring me be more likely to respond to a low download speed over a longer period of time or would it be better to download as fast as possible to get in and get out? Or does it really matter?
Last Active: Apr 13, 2015
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You're labouring under a misapprehension: that your ISP is the one looking for you. They're not. They don't care what you do with the bandwidth you're paying them for (and the more of it you use the better from their point ot view).
Third parties enter torrent swarms and note the IP addresses of people downloading. They don't care how fast you're downloading, they only care that you are. The less time you're in a swarm the less chance of you have of being there when they do.
As to whether it matters, that depends on what you're downloading and where you live but, for most people most of the time, no it doesn't really matter.
Last Active: Feb 09, 2015
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Your friend is right.
Your ISP isn't monitoring anything. If they didn't want you downloading anything fast, they wouldn't sell you a package that lets you download fast.
The more time you spend in a swarm, the greater the chance your IP will be spotted by anyone looking to monitor that kind of thing. However, the reality is that most of the planet has an asymmetrical connection, so regardless of how fast they download, they will spend most of their time in the swarm waiting to upload back what they downloaded.
Last Active: Aug 24, 2014
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Thanks for the answers.
I just wasn't sure since I tried doing both back at home and if I used a high speed, the internet speed as a whole would slow down. If I kept it slow, the internet speed wouldn't change all that much.
I got back to school and tried downloading some textbooks (not on the school's wifi) and the internet seemed to go down all day. I'll probably just assume it's because it was the first week of school and everyone was using up all the bandwidth or whatever.
