I have been reading with interest several articles about fasttrack/swarming etc.

i came up with an idea quite some time ago (posted in the sourceforge forum i beleive) wherby if someone is downloading a file then this file is automaticaly shared and given high priority. Even in its partialy downloaded state, this can still be of benefit to some clients requesting a segment of the file.

thus files that are in high demand will be more widely available and big servers that have these files will become less overloaded benefiting all.

this idea does not need a change in the standard just implementation in the client.

the file is simply reported the same as the original file and requests for bytes outside the available bytes are delayed untill they are available or are rejected.

with this a user with no files to share would no longer detract as much bandwidth from the network, if at all, even with an asymetric bandwidth as one rarely downloads dificult to find files at max download rate so the file might well be uploaded to some else at a similar rate - thus detracting nothing from the network.

this seems to be just as good if not beter than fasttrack/swarming, as the availability is automaticaly increased in direct proportion to the demand.

with the ability to control upload bandwidth independantly from download bandwidth people like me with asymetric bandwidths will not suffer from reduced download speed.

Colin