Swarm details tab

From AzureusWiki

The Swarm Tab:

• You can find the tab under any particular "File Details" tab.
• You are presented with a bunch of circles, which look like pie charts, of a sort, all joined together.
• Your client is situated in the center (with its progress displayed inside)
• Everyone you are connected to in the swarm is displayed around yours in a circle formation

• The pies show the percentage downloaded
  • blue pies are normal peers
  • gray pies are "snubbed" peers
• Links between you and a peer appear when either of you is willing to send data
• Moving rectangles on those links show data transmission:
  • dark blue: progress of the packet being downloaded
  • light blue: progress of the packet being sent

Questions:

I'm looking for a more detailed explanation of the Swarm Tab. The above info was very helpful, but I think it could be a bit more comprehensive. For example, these pies in a ring around my client: some are percentages as already explained above, but some of them are grey and some are blue. Does this have the same meaning as in the other tabs, i.e., that the grey color stands for some kind of buffering? And I also have lots of both completely empty pies both sending and receiving data from me, as well as completely filled both blue and grey pies also sending and receiving. What does that mean? I would be very grateful to anyone caring to explain this a bit further.

To summarize:

• Empty pies
• Full pies
• Meaning of blue/grey color

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I am wondering what it means if a rectangle is not traveling on a line - most commonly light blue ones. Perhaps it means that there is not a stable connection?

Answers:

The fullness of the pie does indicate the percentage of the torrent already possessed by that peer. Empty means none (or almost none), full means all (or nearly all). (A pie doesn't give much resolution for showing small numbers - it may be hard to distinguish 0.01% from zero.)

[Actually, I don't think that's true. I'm seeing only 29.2% of a particular torrent in my swarm, but several circles on the swarm chart are full even when there's only one seed, to which I'm not connected, in the swarm. - Tsee]

Gray and blue on the pie mean the same thing that they do on the Peers tab: a gray client is being "snubbed". This means that the last time Azureus requested a piece from that client, it came very slowly (in fact, it might not even be done yet, hence you will still see it moving); hence Azureus will put them towards the bottom of the list of clients to consider when asking for the next piece.

Finally, I think the swarm page will show packets moving even for overhead communication, like "I have pieces x,y,z available - want 'em?" or "Sorry, I'm too busy - I'm choking your request for now". Not sure though.

Read the Azureus FAQ