What does min_peers do?

[P4rD0nM3]

I know what max_peers does but what does min_peers actually do?

If I set min_peers to 0 then rtorrent never cycles all the 23 trackers I've put in since the first one pretty much covers anything greater than 0. If I set min_peers to 1000 though, it cycles each and every tracker that I've put in the torrent and tries to connect and serve all peers.

So what's the best setting if you just want to seed...seed...seed...? Because it looks like setting min_peers to zero will make rtorrent not cycle the other trackers if tracker0 already has > 0 peers.

[anonymous]

It's the number of peers rtorrent should try to reach on its own.

Set it to half or a third of your max_peers, so that you keep slots available for peers that can't accept incoming connections. If you fill all peer slots with outgoing connections, incoming peers will be rejected. Or set it to the number of peers you need to saturate your upload speed.

Excessive tracker announces are useless if your peer list is already full, so do not set min_peers too high.

[P4rD0nM3]

Does incoming peers (for that torrent alone) matter if you're just seeding it now?

[anonymous]

Yes, because peers that can't themselves accept incoming connections rely on you having open slots for them to connect to.

[P4rD0nM3]

Aah but that will only happen if and only if 1000 peers is reached right? Because I don't think I'll reach that amount of peers for one of my torrents.