How come you don't connect to everybody?

[Tate]

Here's something I've always wondered, when you download a torrent, how come you're not connected to every user who's downloading the same show?

For example, let's say through the website you see that there are 15 seeds and 30 leechers. But when you start up the torrent, you're only connected to like 10 seeds and 20 peers..... how come there's no contact with the others? I usually set my Upload rate to 40 kB/s, and Max uploads to 30.

[Right now I'm downloading a Zep torrent from somewhere else and I see that there are 58 seeds, but I'm only connected to 20?!?]

Just something I've always wondered, thanks :)

[rhinowing]

are you firewalled or on a router?

[Ted]

There may be a setting in your client that determines how many connections you can have for a torrent.

[U2Lynne]

There are settings in your client that say how many people you are willing to connect to. There are also settings in my client that say how many people I am willing to connect to. So, if you say you are willing to connect to 100 people and I say I am only willing to connect to 50 people and there are over 50 people on the torrent, you may not connect to me and thus not connect to everyone. Of course, then there are firewall issues and whether you actually *can* connect to people at all....

[Tate]

No firewall on my side...

But OK now I get it. Thanks for the answer!