struct proxy_settings
{
   proxy_settings ();

   enum proxy_type
   {
      none,
      socks4,
      socks5,
      socks5_pw,
      http,
      http_pw,
      i2p_proxy,
   };

   std::string hostname;
   std::string username;
   std::string password;
   boost::uint8_t type;
   boost::uint16_t port;
   bool proxy_hostnames;
   bool proxy_peer_connections;
};

enum proxy_type

Declared in "libtorrent/session_settings.hpp"

name	value	description
none	0	This is the default, no proxy server is used, all other fields are ignored.
socks4	1	The server is assumed to be a SOCKS4 server that requires a username.
socks5	2	The server is assumed to be a SOCKS5 server (RFC 1928) that does not require any authentication. The username and password are ignored.
socks5_pw	3	The server is assumed to be a SOCKS5 server that supports plain text username and password authentication (RFC 1929). The username and password specified may be sent to the proxy if it requires.
http	4	The server is assumed to be an HTTP proxy. If the transport used for the connection is non-HTTP, the server is assumed to support the CONNECT method. i.e. for web seeds and HTTP trackers, a plain proxy will suffice. The proxy is assumed to not require authorization. The username and password will not be used.
http_pw	5	The server is assumed to be an HTTP proxy that requires user authorization. The username and password will be sent to the proxy.
i2p_proxy	6	route through a i2p SAM proxy

hostname

the name or IP of the proxy server. port is the port number the proxy listens to. If required, username and password can be set to authenticate with the proxy.

type

tells libtorrent what kind of proxy server it is. See proxy_type enum for options

port

the port the proxy server is running on

proxy_hostnames

defaults to true. It means that hostnames should be attempted to be resolved through the proxy instead of using the local DNS service. This is only supported by SOCKS5 and HTTP.

proxy_peer_connections

determines whether or not to excempt peer and web seed connections from using the proxy. This defaults to true, i.e. peer connections are proxied by default.

struct session_settings
{
   session_settings (std::string const& user_agent = "libtorrent/"
      LIBTORRENT_VERSION);
   ~session_settings ();

   enum suggest_mode_t
   {
      no_piece_suggestions,
      suggest_read_cache,
   };

   enum choking_algorithm_t
   {
      fixed_slots_choker,
      auto_expand_choker,
      rate_based_choker,
      bittyrant_choker,
   };

   enum seed_choking_algorithm_t
   {
      round_robin,
      fastest_upload,
      anti_leech,
   };

   enum io_buffer_mode_t
   {
      enable_os_cache,
      disable_os_cache_for_aligned_files,
      disable_os_cache,
   };

   enum disk_cache_algo_t
   {
      lru,
      largest_contiguous,
      avoid_readback,
   };

   enum bandwidth_mixed_algo_t
   {
      prefer_tcp,
      peer_proportional,
   };

   int version;
   std::string user_agent;
   int tracker_completion_timeout;
   int tracker_receive_timeout;
   int stop_tracker_timeout;
   int tracker_maximum_response_length;
   int piece_timeout;
   int request_timeout;
   int request_queue_time;
   int max_allowed_in_request_queue;
   int max_out_request_queue;
   int whole_pieces_threshold;
   int peer_timeout;
   int urlseed_timeout;
   int urlseed_pipeline_size;
   int urlseed_wait_retry;
   int file_pool_size;
   bool allow_multiple_connections_per_ip;
   int max_failcount;
   int min_reconnect_time;
   int peer_connect_timeout;
   bool ignore_limits_on_local_network;
   int connection_speed;
   bool send_redundant_have;
   bool lazy_bitfields;
   int inactivity_timeout;
   int unchoke_interval;
   int optimistic_unchoke_interval;
   std::string announce_ip;
   int num_want;
   int initial_picker_threshold;
   int allowed_fast_set_size;
   int suggest_mode;
   int max_queued_disk_bytes;
   int max_queued_disk_bytes_low_watermark;
   int handshake_timeout;
   bool use_dht_as_fallback;
   bool free_torrent_hashes;
   bool upnp_ignore_nonrouters;
   int send_buffer_low_watermark;
   int send_buffer_watermark;
   int send_buffer_watermark_factor;
   int choking_algorithm;
   int seed_choking_algorithm;
   bool use_parole_mode;
   int cache_size;
   int cache_buffer_chunk_size;
   int cache_expiry;
   bool use_read_cache;
   bool explicit_read_cache;
   int explicit_cache_interval;
   int disk_io_write_mode;
   int disk_io_read_mode;
   bool coalesce_reads;
   bool coalesce_writes;
   std::pair<int, int> outgoing_ports;
   char peer_tos;
   int active_downloads;
   int active_seeds;
   int active_dht_limit;
   int active_tracker_limit;
   int active_lsd_limit;
   int active_limit;
   bool auto_manage_prefer_seeds;
   bool dont_count_slow_torrents;
   int auto_manage_interval;
   float share_ratio_limit;
   float seed_time_ratio_limit;
   int seed_time_limit;
   int peer_turnover_interval;
   float peer_turnover;
   float peer_turnover_cutoff;
   bool close_redundant_connections;
   int auto_scrape_interval;
   int auto_scrape_min_interval;
   int max_peerlist_size;
   int max_paused_peerlist_size;
   int min_announce_interval;
   bool prioritize_partial_pieces;
   int auto_manage_startup;
   bool rate_limit_ip_overhead;
   bool announce_to_all_trackers;
   bool announce_to_all_tiers;
   bool prefer_udp_trackers;
   bool strict_super_seeding;
   int seeding_piece_quota;
   int max_sparse_regions;
   bool lock_disk_cache;
   int max_rejects;
   int recv_socket_buffer_size;
   int send_socket_buffer_size;
   bool optimize_hashing_for_speed;
   int file_checks_delay_per_block;
   disk_cache_algo_t disk_cache_algorithm;
   int read_cache_line_size;
   int write_cache_line_size;
   int optimistic_disk_retry;
   bool disable_hash_checks;
   bool allow_reordered_disk_operations;
   bool allow_i2p_mixed;
   int max_suggest_pieces;
   bool drop_skipped_requests;
   bool low_prio_disk;
   int local_service_announce_interval;
   int dht_announce_interval;
   int udp_tracker_token_expiry;
   bool volatile_read_cache;
   bool guided_read_cache;
   int default_cache_min_age;
   int num_optimistic_unchoke_slots;
   bool no_atime_storage;
   int default_est_reciprocation_rate;
   int increase_est_reciprocation_rate;
   int decrease_est_reciprocation_rate;
   bool incoming_starts_queued_torrents;
   bool report_true_downloaded;
   bool strict_end_game_mode;
   bool broadcast_lsd;
   bool enable_outgoing_utp;
   bool enable_incoming_utp;
   bool enable_outgoing_tcp;
   bool enable_incoming_tcp;
   int max_pex_peers;
   bool ignore_resume_timestamps;
   bool no_recheck_incomplete_resume;
   bool anonymous_mode;
   bool force_proxy;
   int tick_interval;
   bool report_web_seed_downloads;
   int share_mode_target;
   int upload_rate_limit;
   int download_rate_limit;
   int local_upload_rate_limit;
   int local_download_rate_limit;
   int dht_upload_rate_limit;
   int unchoke_slots_limit;
   int half_open_limit;
   int connections_limit;
   int connections_slack;
   int utp_target_delay;
   int utp_gain_factor;
   int utp_min_timeout;
   int utp_syn_resends;
   int utp_fin_resends;
   int utp_num_resends;
   int utp_connect_timeout;
   bool utp_dynamic_sock_buf;
   int utp_loss_multiplier;
   int mixed_mode_algorithm;
   bool rate_limit_utp;
   int listen_queue_size;
   bool announce_double_nat;
   int torrent_connect_boost;
   bool seeding_outgoing_connections;
   bool no_connect_privileged_ports;
   int alert_queue_size;
   int max_metadata_size;
   bool smooth_connects;
   bool always_send_user_agent;
   bool apply_ip_filter_to_trackers;
   int read_job_every;
   bool use_disk_read_ahead;
   bool lock_files;
   int ssl_listen;
   int tracker_backoff;
   bool ban_web_seeds;
   int max_http_recv_buffer_size;
   bool support_share_mode;
   bool support_merkle_torrents;
   bool report_redundant_bytes;
   std::string handshake_client_version;
   bool use_disk_cache_pool;
};

enum suggest_mode_t

Declared in "libtorrent/session_settings.hpp"

name	value	description
no_piece_suggestions	0	the default. will not send out suggest messages.
suggest_read_cache	1	send out suggest messages for the most recent pieces that are in the read cache.

enum choking_algorithm_t

Declared in "libtorrent/session_settings.hpp"

name	value	description
fixed_slots_choker	0	the traditional choker with a fixed number of unchoke slots, as specified by session::set_max_uploads()..
auto_expand_choker	1	opens at least the number of slots as specified by session::set_max_uploads() but opens up more slots if the upload capacity is not saturated. This unchoker will work just like the fixed_slot_choker if there's no global upload rate limit set.
rate_based_choker	2	opens up unchoke slots based on the upload rate achieved to peers. The more slots that are opened, the marginal upload rate required to open up another slot increases.
bittyrant_choker	3	attempts to optimize download rate by finding the reciprocation rate of each peer individually and prefers peers that gives the highest return on investment. It still allocates all upload capacity, but shuffles it around to the best peers first. For this choker to be efficient, you need to set a global upload rate limit session_settings::upload_rate_limit. For more information about this choker, see the paper.

enum seed_choking_algorithm_t

Declared in "libtorrent/session_settings.hpp"

name	value	description
round_robin	0	round-robins the peers that are unchoked when seeding. This distributes the upload bandwidht uniformly and fairly. It minimizes the ability for a peer to download everything without redistributing it.
fastest_upload	1	unchokes the peers we can send to the fastest. This might be a bit more reliable in utilizing all available capacity.
anti_leech	2	prioritizes peers who have just started or are just about to finish the download. The intention is to force peers in the middle of the download to trade with each other.

enum io_buffer_mode_t

Declared in "libtorrent/session_settings.hpp"

name	value	description
enable_os_cache	0	This is the default and files are opened normally, with the OS caching reads and writes.
disable_os_cache_for_aligned_files	1	This will open files in unbuffered mode for files where every read and write would be sector aligned. Using aligned disk offsets is a requirement on some operating systems.
disable_os_cache	2	This opens all files in unbuffered mode (if allowed by the operating system). Linux and Windows, for instance, require disk offsets to be sector aligned, and in those cases, this option is the same as disable_os_caches_for_aligned_files.

enum disk_cache_algo_t

Declared in "libtorrent/session_settings.hpp"

name	value	description
lru	0	This flushes the entire piece, in the write cache, that was least recently written to.
largest_contiguous	1	will flush the largest sequences of contiguous blocks from the write cache, regarless of the piece's last use time.
avoid_readback	2	will prioritize flushing blocks that will avoid having to read them back in to verify the hash of the piece once it's done. This is especially useful for high throughput setups, where reading from the disk is especially expensive.

enum bandwidth_mixed_algo_t

Declared in "libtorrent/session_settings.hpp"

name	value	description
prefer_tcp	0	disables the mixed mode bandwidth balancing
peer_proportional	1	does not throttle uTP, throttles TCP to the same proportion of throughput as there are TCP connections

version

automatically set to the libtorrent version you're using in order to be forward binary compatible. This field should not be changed.

user_agent

the client identification to the tracker. The recommended format of this string is: "ClientName/ClientVersion libtorrent/libtorrentVersion". This name will not only be used when making HTTP requests, but also when sending extended headers to peers that support that extension.

tracker_completion_timeout

the number of seconds the tracker connection will wait from when it sent the request until it considers the tracker to have timed-out. Default value is 60 seconds.

tracker_receive_timeout

the number of seconds to wait to receive any data from the tracker. If no data is received for this number of seconds, the tracker will be considered as having timed out. If a tracker is down, this is the kind of timeout that will occur. The default value is 20 seconds.

stop_tracker_timeout

the time to wait when sending a stopped message before considering a tracker to have timed out. this is usually shorter, to make the client quit faster

This is given in seconds. Default is 10 seconds.

tracker_maximum_response_length

the maximum number of bytes in a tracker response. If a response size passes this number it will be rejected and the connection will be closed. On gzipped responses this size is measured on the uncompressed data. So, if you get 20 bytes of gzip response that'll expand to 2 megs, it will be interrupted before the entire response has been uncompressed (given your limit is lower than 2 megs). Default limit is 1 megabyte.

piece_timeout

controls the number of seconds from a request is sent until it times out if no piece response is returned.

request_timeout

the number of seconds one block (16kB) is expected to be received within. If it's not, the block is requested from a different peer

request_queue_time

the length of the request queue given in the number of seconds it should take for the other end to send all the pieces. i.e. the actual number of requests depends on the download rate and this number.

max_allowed_in_request_queue

the number of outstanding block requests a peer is allowed to queue up in the client. If a peer sends more requests than this (before the first one has been sent) the last request will be dropped. the higher this is, the faster upload speeds the client can get to a single peer.

max_out_request_queue

the maximum number of outstanding requests to send to a peer. This limit takes precedence over request_queue_time. i.e. no matter the download speed, the number of outstanding requests will never exceed this limit.

whole_pieces_threshold

if a whole piece can be downloaded in this number of seconds, or less, the peer_connection will prefer to request whole pieces at a time from this peer. The benefit of this is to better utilize disk caches by doing localized accesses and also to make it easier to identify bad peers if a piece fails the hash check.

peer_timeout

the number of seconds to wait for any activity on the peer wire before closing the connectiong due to time out. This defaults to 120 seconds, since that's what's specified in the protocol specification. After half the time out, a keep alive message is sent.

urlseed_timeout

same as peer_timeout, but only applies to url-seeds. this is usually set lower, because web servers are expected to be more reliable. This value defaults to 20 seconds.

urlseed_pipeline_size

controls the pipelining with the web server. When using persistent connections to HTTP 1.1 servers, the client is allowed to send more requests before the first response is received. This number controls the number of outstanding requests to use with url-seeds. Default is 5.

urlseed_wait_retry

time to wait until a new retry takes place

file_pool_size

sets the upper limit on the total number of files this session will keep open. The reason why files are left open at all is that some anti virus software hooks on every file close, and scans the file for viruses. deferring the closing of the files will be the difference between a usable system and a completely hogged down system. Most operating systems also has a limit on the total number of file descriptors a process may have open. It is usually a good idea to find this limit and set the number of connections and the number of files limits so their sum is slightly below it.

allow_multiple_connections_per_ip

determines if connections from the same IP address as existing connections should be rejected or not. Multiple connections from the same IP address is not allowed by default, to prevent abusive behavior by peers. It may be useful to allow such connections in cases where simulations are run on the same machie, and all peers in a swarm has the same IP address.

max_failcount

the maximum times we try to connect to a peer before stop connecting again. If a peer succeeds, its failcounter is reset. If a peer is retrieved from a peer source (other than DHT) the failcount is decremented by one, allowing another try.

min_reconnect_time

the number of seconds to wait to reconnect to a peer. this time is multiplied with the failcount.

peer_connect_timeout

the number of seconds to wait after a connection attempt is initiated to a peer until it is considered as having timed out. The default is 10 seconds. This setting is especially important in case the number of half-open connections are limited, since stale half-open connection may delay the connection of other peers considerably.

ignore_limits_on_local_network

if set to true, upload, download and unchoke limits are ignored for peers on the local network.

connection_speed

the number of connection attempts that are made per second. If a number < 0 is specified, it will default to 200 connections per second. If 0 is specified, it means don't make outgoing connections at all.

send_redundant_have

if this is set to true, have messages will be sent to peers that already have the piece. This is typically not necessary, but it might be necessary for collecting statistics in some cases. Default is false.

lazy_bitfields

prevents outgoing bitfields from being full. If the client is seed, a few bits will be set to 0, and later filled in with have-messages. This is an old attempt to prevent certain ISPs from stopping people from seeding.

inactivity_timeout

if a peer is uninteresting and uninterested for longer than this number of seconds, it will be disconnected. default is 10 minutes

unchoke_interval

the number of seconds between chokes/unchokes. On this interval, peers are re-evaluated for being choked/unchoked. This is defined as 30 seconds in the protocol, and it should be significantly longer than what it takes for TCP to ramp up to it's max rate.

optimistic_unchoke_interval

the number of seconds between each optimistic unchoke. On this timer, the currently optimistically unchoked peer will change.

announce_ip

the ip address passed along to trackers as the &ip= parameter. If left as the default (an empty string), that parameter is omitted. Most trackers ignore this argument. This is here for completeness for edge-cases where it may be useful.

num_want

the number of peers we want from each tracker request. It defines what is sent as the &num_want= parameter to the tracker. Stopped messages always send num_want=0. This setting control what to say in the case where we actually want peers.

initial_picker_threshold

specifies the number of pieces we need before we switch to rarest first picking. This defaults to 4, which means the 4 first pieces in any torrent are picked at random, the following pieces are picked in rarest first order.

allowed_fast_set_size

the number of allowed pieces to send to choked peers that supports the fast extensions

suggest_mode

this determines which pieces will be suggested to peers suggest read cache will make libtorrent suggest pieces that are fresh in the disk read cache, to potentially lower disk access and increase the cache hit ratio

for options, see suggest_mode_t.

max_queued_disk_bytes

the maximum number of bytes a connection may have pending in the disk write queue before its download rate is being throttled. This prevents fast downloads to slow medias to allocate more memory indefinitely. This should be set to at least 16 kB to not completely disrupt normal downloads. If it's set to 0, you will be starving the disk thread and nothing will be written to disk. this is a per session setting.

When this limit is reached, the peer connections will stop reading data from their sockets, until the disk thread catches up. Setting this too low will severly limit your download rate.

max_queued_disk_bytes_low_watermark

this is the low watermark for the disk buffer queue. whenever the number of queued bytes exceed the max_queued_disk_bytes, libtorrent will wait for it to drop below this value before issuing more reads from the sockets. If set to 0, the low watermark will be half of the max queued disk bytes

handshake_timeout

the number of seconds to wait for a handshake response from a peer. If no response is received within this time, the peer is disconnected.

use_dht_as_fallback

determines how the DHT is used. If this is true, the DHT will only be used for torrents where all trackers in its tracker list has failed. Either by an explicit error message or a time out. This is false by default, which means the DHT is used by default regardless of if the trackers fail or not.

free_torrent_hashes

determines whether or not the torrent's piece hashes are kept in memory after the torrent becomes a seed or not. If it is set to true the hashes are freed once the torrent is a seed (they're not needed anymore since the torrent won't download anything more). If it's set to false they are not freed. If they are freed, the torrent_info returned by get_torrent_info() will return an object that may be incomplete, that cannot be passed back to async_add_torrent() and add_torrent() for instance.

upnp_ignore_nonrouters

indicates whether or not the UPnP implementation should ignore any broadcast response from a device whose address is not the configured router for this machine. i.e. it's a way to not talk to other people's routers by mistake.

send_buffer_low_watermark

This is the minimum send buffer target size (send buffer includes bytes pending being read from disk). For good and snappy seeding performance, set this fairly high, to at least fit a few blocks. This is essentially the initial window size which will determine how fast we can ramp up the send rate

send_buffer_watermark

the upper limit of the send buffer low-watermark.

if the send buffer has fewer bytes than this, we'll read another 16kB block onto it. If set too small, upload rate capacity will suffer. If set too high, memory will be wasted. The actual watermark may be lower than this in case the upload rate is low, this is the upper limit.

send_buffer_watermark_factor

the current upload rate to a peer is multiplied by this factor to get the send buffer watermark. The factor is specified as a percentage. i.e. 50 indicates a factor of 0.5.

This product is clamped to the send_buffer_watermark setting to not exceed the max. For high speed upload, this should be set to a greater value than 100. The default is 50.

For high capacity connections, setting this higher can improve upload performance and disk throughput. Setting it too high may waste RAM and create a bias towards read jobs over write jobs.

choking_algorithm

specifies which algorithm to use to determine which peers to unchoke. This setting replaces the deprecated settings auto_upload_slots and auto_upload_slots_rate_based. For options, see choking_algorithm_t.

seed_choking_algorithm

controls the seeding unchoke behavior. For options, see seed_choking_algorithm_t.

use_parole_mode

specifies if parole mode should be used. Parole mode means that peers that participate in pieces that fail the hash check are put in a mode where they are only allowed to download whole pieces. If the whole piece a peer in parole mode fails the hash check, it is banned. If a peer participates in a piece that passes the hash check, it is taken out of parole mode.

cache_size

the disk write and read cache. It is specified in units of 16 KiB blocks. Buffers that are part of a peer's send or receive buffer also count against this limit. Send and receive buffers will never be denied to be allocated, but they will cause the actual cached blocks to be flushed or evicted. If this is set to -1, the cache size is automatically set to the amount of physical RAM available in the machine divided by 8. If the amount of physical RAM cannot be determined, it's set to 1024 (= 16 MiB).

Disk buffers are allocated using a pool allocator, the number of blocks that are allocated at a time when the pool needs to grow can be specified in cache_buffer_chunk_size. This defaults to 16 blocks. Lower numbers saves memory at the expense of more heap allocations. It must be at least 1.

cache_buffer_chunk_size

this is the number of disk buffer blocks (16 kiB) that should be allocated at a time. It must be at least 1. Lower number saves memory at the expense of more heap allocations

cache_expiry

the number of seconds a write cache entry sits idle in the cache before it's forcefully flushed to disk.

use_read_cache

when set to true (default), the disk cache is also used to cache pieces read from disk. Blocks for writing pieces takes presedence.

explicit_read_cache

defaults to 0. If set to something greater than 0, the disk read cache will not be evicted by cache misses and will explicitly be controlled based on the rarity of pieces. Rare pieces are more likely to be cached. This would typically be used together with suggest_mode set to suggest_read_cache. The value is the number of pieces to keep in the read cache. If the actual read cache can't fit as many, it will essentially be clamped.

explicit_cache_interval

the number of seconds in between each refresh of a part of the explicit read cache. Torrents take turns in refreshing and this is the time in between each torrent refresh. Refreshing a torrent's explicit read cache means scanning all pieces and picking a random set of the rarest ones. There is an affinity to pick pieces that are already in the cache, so that subsequent refreshes only swaps in pieces that are rarer than whatever is in the cache at the time.

disk_io_write_mode disk_io_read_mode

determines how files are opened when they're in read only mode versus read and write mode. For options, see io_buffer_mode_t.

One reason to disable caching is that it may help the operating system from growing its file cache indefinitely. Since some OSes only allow aligned files to be opened in unbuffered mode, It is recommended to make the largest file in a torrent the first file (with offset 0) or use pad files to align all files to piece boundries.

outgoing_ports

if set to something other than (0, 0) is a range of ports used to bind outgoing sockets to. This may be useful for users whose router allows them to assign QoS classes to traffic based on its local port. It is a range instead of a single port because of the problems with failing to reconnect to peers if a previous socket to that peer and port is in TIME_WAIT state.

Warning

setting outgoing ports will limit the ability to keep multiple connections to the same client, even for different torrents. It is not recommended to change this setting. Its main purpose is to use as an escape hatch for cheap routers with QoS capability but can only classify flows based on port numbers.

peer_tos

determines the TOS byte set in the IP header of every packet sent to peers (including web seeds). The default value for this is 0x0 (no marking). One potentially useful TOS mark is 0x20, this represents the QBone scavenger service. For more details, see QBSS.

active_downloads active_seeds active_dht_limit active_tracker_limit active_lsd_limit active_limit

for auto managed torrents, these are the limits they are subject to. If there are too many torrents some of the auto managed ones will be paused until some slots free up.

active_dht_limit and active_tracker_limit limits the number of torrents that will be active on the DHT and their tracker. If the active limit is set higher than these numbers, some torrents will be "active" in the sense that they will accept incoming connections, but not announce on the DHT or their trackers.

active_lsd_limit is the max number of torrents to announce to the local network over the local service discovery protocol. By default this is 80, which is no more than one announce every 5 seconds (assuming the default announce interval of 5 minutes).

active_limit is a hard limit on the number of active torrents. This applies even to slow torrents.

You can have more torrents active, even though they are not announced to the DHT, lsd or their tracker. If some peer knows about you for any reason and tries to connect, it will still be accepted, unless the torrent is paused, which means it won't accept any connections.

active_downloads and active_seeds controls how many active seeding and downloading torrents the queuing mechanism allows. The target number of active torrents is min(active_downloads + active_seeds, active_limit). active_downloads and active_seeds are upper limits on the number of downloading torrents and seeding torrents respectively. Setting the value to -1 means unlimited.

For example if there are 10 seeding torrents and 10 downloading torrents, and active_downloads is 4 and active_seeds is 4, there will be 4 seeds active and 4 downloading torrents. If the settings are active_downloads = 2 and active_seeds = 4, then there will be 2 downloading torrents and 4 seeding torrents active. Torrents that are not auto managed are also counted against these limits. If there are non-auto managed torrents that use up all the slots, no auto managed torrent will be activated.

auto_manage_prefer_seeds

prefer seeding torrents when determining which torrents to give active slots to, the default is false which gives preference to downloading torrents

dont_count_slow_torrents

if true, torrents without any payload transfers are not subject to the active_seeds and active_downloads limits. This is intended to make it more likely to utilize all available bandwidth, and avoid having torrents that don't transfer anything block the active slots.

auto_manage_interval

the number of seconds in between recalculating which torrents to activate and which ones to queue

share_ratio_limit

when a seeding torrent reaches either the share ratio (bytes up / bytes down) or the seed time ratio (seconds as seed / seconds as downloader) or the seed time limit (seconds as seed) it is considered done, and it will leave room for other torrents the default value for share ratio is 2 the default seed time ratio is 7, because that's a common asymmetry ratio on connections

Note

This is an out-dated option that doesn't make much sense. It will be removed in future versions of libtorrent

seed_time_ratio_limit

the seeding time / downloading time ratio limit for considering a seeding torrent to have met the seed limit criteria. See queuing.

seed_time_limit

the limit on the time a torrent has been an active seed (specified in seconds) before it is considered having met the seed limit criteria. See queuing.

peer_turnover_interval peer_turnover peer_turnover_cutoff

controls a feature where libtorrent periodically can disconnect the least useful peers in the hope of connecting to better ones. peer_turnover_interval controls the interval of this optimistic disconnect. It defaults to every 5 minutes, and is specified in seconds.

peer_turnover Is the fraction of the peers that are disconnected. This is a float where 1.f represents all peers an 0 represents no peers. It defaults to 4% (i.e. 0.04f)

peer_turnover_cutoff is the cut off trigger for optimistic unchokes. If a torrent has more than this fraction of its connection limit, the optimistic unchoke is triggered. This defaults to 90% (i.e. 0.9f).

close_redundant_connections

specifies whether libtorrent should close connections where both ends have no utility in keeping the connection open. For instance if both ends have completed their downloads, there's no point in keeping it open. This defaults to true.

auto_scrape_interval

the number of seconds between scrapes of queued torrents (auto managed and paused torrents). Auto managed torrents that are paused, are scraped regularly in order to keep track of their downloader/seed ratio. This ratio is used to determine which torrents to seed and which to pause.

auto_scrape_min_interval

the minimum number of seconds between any automatic scrape (regardless of torrent). In case there are a large number of paused auto managed torrents, this puts a limit on how often a scrape request is sent.

max_peerlist_size

the maximum number of peers in the list of known peers. These peers are not necessarily connected, so this number should be much greater than the maximum number of connected peers. Peers are evicted from the cache when the list grows passed 90% of this limit, and once the size hits the limit, peers are no longer added to the list. If this limit is set to 0, there is no limit on how many peers we'll keep in the peer list.

max_paused_peerlist_size

the max peer list size used for torrents that are paused. This default to the same as max_peerlist_size, but can be used to save memory for paused torrents, since it's not as important for them to keep a large peer list.

min_announce_interval

the minimum allowed announce interval for a tracker. This is specified in seconds, defaults to 5 minutes and is used as a sanity check on what is returned from a tracker. It mitigates hammering misconfigured trackers.

prioritize_partial_pieces

If true, partial pieces are picked before pieces that are more rare. If false, rare pieces are always prioritized, unless the number of partial pieces is growing out of proportion.

auto_manage_startup

the number of seconds a torrent is considered active after it was started, regardless of upload and download speed. This is so that newly started torrents are not considered inactive until they have a fair chance to start downloading.

rate_limit_ip_overhead

if set to true, the estimated TCP/IP overhead is drained from the rate limiters, to avoid exceeding the limits with the total traffic

announce_to_all_trackers

controls how multi tracker torrents are treated. If this is set to true, all trackers in the same tier are announced to in parallel. If all trackers in tier 0 fails, all trackers in tier 1 are announced as well. If it's set to false, the behavior is as defined by the multi tracker specification. It defaults to false, which is the same behavior previous versions of libtorrent has had as well.

announce_to_all_tiers

controls how multi tracker torrents are treated. When this is set to true, one tracker from each tier is announced to. This is the uTorrent behavior. This is false by default in order to comply with the multi-tracker specification.

prefer_udp_trackers

true by default. It means that trackers may be rearranged in a way that udp trackers are always tried before http trackers for the same hostname. Setting this to fails means that the trackers' tier is respected and there's no preference of one protocol over another.

strict_super_seeding

when this is set to true, a piece has to have been forwarded to a third peer before another one is handed out. This is the traditional definition of super seeding.

seeding_piece_quota

the number of pieces to send to a peer, when seeding, before rotating in another peer to the unchoke set. It defaults to 3 pieces, which means that when seeding, any peer we've sent more than this number of pieces to will be unchoked in favour of a choked peer.

max_sparse_regions

is a limit of the number of sparse regions in a torrent. A sparse region is defined as a hole of pieces we have not yet downloaded, in between pieces that have been downloaded. This is used as a hack for windows vista which has a bug where you cannot write files with more than a certain number of sparse regions. This limit is not hard, it will be exceeded. Once it's exceeded, pieces that will maintain or decrease the number of sparse regions are prioritized. To disable this functionality, set this to 0. It defaults to 0 on all platforms except windows.

lock_disk_cache

if lock disk cache is set to true the disk cache that's in use, will be locked in physical memory, preventing it from being swapped out.

max_rejects

the number of piece requests we will reject in a row while a peer is choked before the peer is considered abusive and is disconnected.

recv_socket_buffer_size send_socket_buffer_size

specifies the buffer sizes set on peer sockets. 0 (which is the default) means the OS default (i.e. don't change the buffer sizes). The socket buffer sizes are changed using setsockopt() with SOL_SOCKET/SO_RCVBUF and SO_SNDBUFFER.

optimize_hashing_for_speed

chooses between two ways of reading back piece data from disk when its complete and needs to be verified against the piece hash. This happens if some blocks were flushed to the disk out of order. Everything that is flushed in order is hashed as it goes along. Optimizing for speed will allocate space to fit all the the remaingin, unhashed, part of the piece, reads the data into it in a single call and hashes it. This is the default. If optimizing_hashing_for_speed is false, a single block will be allocated (16 kB), and the unhashed parts of the piece are read, one at a time, and hashed in this single block. This is appropriate on systems that are memory constrained.

file_checks_delay_per_block

the number of milliseconds to sleep in between disk read operations when checking torrents. This defaults to 0, but can be set to higher numbers to slow down the rate at which data is read from the disk while checking. This may be useful for background tasks that doesn't matter if they take a bit longer, as long as they leave disk I/O time for other processes.

disk_cache_algorithm

tells the disk I/O thread which cache flush algorithm to use. The default algorithm is largest_contiguous. This is specified by the disk_cache_algo_t enum.

read_cache_line_size

the number of blocks to read into the read cache when a read cache miss occurs. Setting this to 0 is essentially the same thing as disabling read cache. The number of blocks read into the read cache is always capped by the piece boundry.

When a piece in the write cache has write_cache_line_size contiguous blocks in it, they will be flushed. Setting this to 1 effectively disables the write cache.

write_cache_line_size

whenever a contiguous range of this many blocks is found in the write cache, it is flushed immediately

optimistic_disk_retry

the number of seconds from a disk write errors occur on a torrent until libtorrent will take it out of the upload mode, to test if the error condition has been fixed.

libtorrent will only do this automatically for auto managed torrents.

You can explicitly take a torrent out of upload only mode using set_upload_mode().

disable_hash_checks

controls if downloaded pieces are verified against the piece hashes in the torrent file or not. The default is false, i.e. to verify all downloaded data. It may be useful to turn this off for performance profiling and simulation scenarios. Do not disable the hash check for regular bittorrent clients.

allow_reordered_disk_operations

if this is true, disk read operations may be re-ordered based on their physical disk read offset. This greatly improves throughput when uploading to many peers. This assumes a traditional hard drive with a read head and spinning platters. If your storage medium is a solid state drive, this optimization doesn't give you an benefits

allow_i2p_mixed

if this is true, i2p torrents are allowed to also get peers from other sources than the tracker, and connect to regular IPs, not providing any anonymization. This may be useful if the user is not interested in the anonymization of i2p, but still wants to be able to connect to i2p peers.

max_suggest_pieces

the max number of suggested piece indices received from a peer that's remembered. If a peer floods suggest messages, this limit prevents libtorrent from using too much RAM. It defaults to 10.

drop_skipped_requests

If set to true (it defaults to false), piece requests that have been skipped enough times when piece messages are received, will be considered lost. Requests are considered skipped when the returned piece messages are re-ordered compared to the order of the requests. This was an attempt to get out of dead-locks caused by BitComet peers silently ignoring some requests. It may cause problems at high rates, and high level of reordering in the uploading peer, that's why it's disabled by default.

low_prio_disk

determines if the disk I/O should use a normal or low priority policy. This defaults to true, which means that it's low priority by default. Other processes doing disk I/O will normally take priority in this mode. This is meant to improve the overall responsiveness of the system while downloading in the background. For high-performance server setups, this might not be desirable.

local_service_announce_interval

the time between local network announces for a torrent. By default, when local service discovery is enabled a torrent announces itself every 5 minutes. This interval is specified in seconds.

dht_announce_interval

the number of seconds between announcing torrents to the distributed hash table (DHT). This is specified to be 15 minutes which is its default.

udp_tracker_token_expiry

the number of seconds libtorrent will keep UDP tracker connection tokens around for. This is specified to be 60 seconds, and defaults to that. The higher this value is, the fewer packets have to be sent to the UDP tracker. In order for higher values to work, the tracker needs to be configured to match the expiration time for tokens.

volatile_read_cache

if this is set to true, read cache blocks that are hit by peer read requests are removed from the disk cache to free up more space. This is useful if you don't expect the disk cache to create any cache hits from other peers than the one who triggered the cache line to be read into the cache in the first place.

guided_read_cache

enables the disk cache to adjust the size of a cache line generated by peers to depend on the upload rate you are sending to that peer. The intention is to optimize the RAM usage of the cache, to read ahead further for peers that you're sending faster to.

default_cache_min_age

the minimum number of seconds any read cache line is kept in the cache. This defaults to one second but may be greater if guided_read_cache is enabled. Having a lower bound on the time a cache line stays in the cache is an attempt to avoid swapping the same pieces in and out of the cache in case there is a shortage of spare cache space.

num_optimistic_unchoke_slots

the number of optimistic unchoke slots to use. It defaults to 0, which means automatic. Having a higher number of optimistic unchoke slots mean you will find the good peers faster but with the trade-off to use up more bandwidth. When this is set to 0, libtorrent opens up 20% of your allowed upload slots as optimistic unchoke slots.

no_atime_storage

this is a linux-only option and passes in the O_NOATIME to open() when opening files. This may lead to some disk performance improvements.

default_est_reciprocation_rate

the assumed reciprocation rate from peers when using the BitTyrant choker. This defaults to 14 kiB/s. If set too high, you will over-estimate your peers and be more altruistic while finding the true reciprocation rate, if it's set too low, you'll be too stingy and waste finding the true reciprocation rate.

increase_est_reciprocation_rate

specifies how many percent the extimated reciprocation rate should be increased by each unchoke interval a peer is still choking us back. This defaults to 20%. This only applies to the BitTyrant choker.

decrease_est_reciprocation_rate

specifies how many percent the estimated reciprocation rate should be decreased by each unchoke interval a peer unchokes us. This default to 3%. This only applies to the BitTyrant choker.

incoming_starts_queued_torrents

defaults to false. If a torrent has been paused by the auto managed feature in libtorrent, i.e. the torrent is paused and auto managed, this feature affects whether or not it is automatically started on an incoming connection. The main reason to queue torrents, is not to make them unavailable, but to save on the overhead of announcing to the trackers, the DHT and to avoid spreading one's unchoke slots too thin. If a peer managed to find us, even though we're no in the torrent anymore, this setting can make us start the torrent and serve it.

report_true_downloaded

when set to true, the downloaded counter sent to trackers will include the actual number of payload bytes donwnloaded including redundant bytes. If set to false, it will not include any redundany bytes

strict_end_game_mode

defaults to true, and controls when a block may be requested twice. If this is true, a block may only be requested twice when there's ay least one request to every piece that's left to download in the torrent. This may slow down progress on some pieces sometimes, but it may also avoid downloading a lot of redundant bytes. If this is false, libtorrent attempts to use each peer connection to its max, by always requesting something, even if it means requesting something that has been requested from another peer already.

broadcast_lsd

if set to true, the local peer discovery (or Local Service Discovery) will not only use IP multicast, but also broadcast its messages. This can be useful when running on networks that don't support multicast. Since broadcast messages might be expensive and disruptive on networks, only every 8th announce uses broadcast.

enable_outgoing_utp enable_incoming_utp enable_outgoing_tcp enable_incoming_tcp

these all determines if libtorrent should attempt to make outgoing connections of the specific type, or allow incoming connection. By default all of them are enabled.

max_pex_peers

the max number of peers we accept from pex messages from a single peer. this limits the number of concurrent peers any of our peers claims to be connected to. If they clain to be connected to more than this, we'll ignore any peer that exceeds this limit

ignore_resume_timestamps

determines if the storage, when loading resume data files, should verify that the file modification time with the timestamps in the resume data. This defaults to false, which means timestamps are taken into account, and resume data is less likely to accepted (torrents are more likely to be fully checked when loaded). It might be useful to set this to true if your network is faster than your disk, and it would be faster to redownload potentially missed pieces than to go through the whole storage to look for them.

no_recheck_incomplete_resume

determines if the storage should check the whole files when resume data is incomplete or missing or whether it should simply assume we don't have any of the data. By default, this is determined by the existance of any of the files. By setting this setting to true, the files won't be checked, but will go straight to download mode.

anonymous_mode

defaults to false. When set to true, the client tries to hide its identity to a certain degree. The peer-ID will no longer include the client's fingerprint. The user-agent will be reset to an empty string. It will also try to not leak other identifying information, such as your local listen port, your IP etc.

If you're using I2P, a VPN or a proxy, it might make sense to enable anonymous mode.

force_proxy

disables any communication that's not going over a proxy. Enabling this requires a proxy to be configured as well, see set_proxy_settings. The listen sockets are closed, and incoming connections will only be accepted through a SOCKS5 or I2P proxy (if a peer proxy is set up and is run on the same machine as the tracker proxy). This setting also disabled peer country lookups, since those are done via DNS lookups that aren't supported by proxies.

tick_interval

specifies the number of milliseconds between internal ticks. This is the frequency with which bandwidth quota is distributed to peers. It should not be more than one second (i.e. 1000 ms). Setting this to a low value (around 100) means higher resolution bandwidth quota distribution, setting it to a higher value saves CPU cycles.

report_web_seed_downloads

specifies whether downloads from web seeds is reported to the tracker or not. Defaults to on

share_mode_target

specifies the target share ratio for share mode torrents. This defaults to 3, meaning we'll try to upload 3 times as much as we download. Setting this very high, will make it very conservative and you might end up not downloading anything ever (and not affecting your share ratio). It does not make any sense to set this any lower than 2. For instance, if only 3 peers need to download the rarest piece, it's impossible to download a single piece and upload it more than 3 times. If the share_mode_target is set to more than 3, nothing is downloaded.

upload_rate_limit download_rate_limit local_upload_rate_limit local_download_rate_limit

sets the session-global limits of upload and download rate limits, in bytes per second. The local rates refer to peers on the local network. By default peers on the local network are not rate limited.

These rate limits are only used for local peers (peers within the same subnet as the client itself) and it is only used when session_settings::ignore_limits_on_local_network is set to true (which it is by default). These rate limits default to unthrottled, but can be useful in case you want to treat local peers preferentially, but not quite unthrottled.

A value of 0 means unlimited.

dht_upload_rate_limit

sets the rate limit on the DHT. This is specified in bytes per second and defaults to 4000. For busy boxes with lots of torrents that requires more DHT traffic, this should be raised.

unchoke_slots_limit

the max number of unchoked peers in the session. The number of unchoke slots may be ignored depending on what choking_algorithm is set to. A value of -1 means infinite.

half_open_limit

sets the maximum number of half-open connections libtorrent will have when connecting to peers. A half-open connection is one where connect() has been called, but the connection still hasn't been established (nor failed). Windows XP Service Pack 2 sets a default, system wide, limit of the number of half-open connections to 10. So, this limit can be used to work nicer together with other network applications on that system. The default is to have no limit, and passing -1 as the limit, means to have no limit. When limiting the number of simultaneous connection attempts, peers will be put in a queue waiting for their turn to get connected.

connections_limit

sets a global limit on the number of connections opened. The number of connections is set to a hard minimum of at least two per torrent, so if you set a too low connections limit, and open too many torrents, the limit will not be met.

connections_slack

the number of extra incoming connections allowed temporarily, in order to support replacing peers

utp_target_delay

the target delay for uTP sockets in milliseconds. A high value will make uTP connections more aggressive and cause longer queues in the upload bottleneck. It cannot be too low, since the noise in the measurements would cause it to send too slow. The default is 50 milliseconds.

utp_gain_factor

the number of bytes the uTP congestion window can increase at the most in one RTT. This defaults to 300 bytes. If this is set too high, the congestion controller reacts too hard to noise and will not be stable, if it's set too low, it will react slow to congestion and not back off as fast.

utp_min_timeout

the shortest allowed uTP socket timeout, specified in milliseconds. This defaults to 500 milliseconds. The timeout depends on the RTT of the connection, but is never smaller than this value. A connection times out when every packet in a window is lost, or when a packet is lost twice in a row (i.e. the resent packet is lost as well).

The shorter the timeout is, the faster the connection will recover from this situation, assuming the RTT is low enough.

utp_syn_resends

the number of SYN packets that are sent (and timed out) before giving up and closing the socket.

utp_fin_resends

the number of resent packets sent on a closed socket before giving up

utp_num_resends

the number of times a packet is sent (and lossed or timed out) before giving up and closing the connection.

utp_connect_timeout

the number of milliseconds of timeout for the initial SYN packet for uTP connections. For each timed out packet (in a row), the timeout is doubled.

utp_dynamic_sock_buf

controls if the uTP socket manager is allowed to increase the socket buffer if a network interface with a large MTU is used (such as loopback or ethernet jumbo frames). This defaults to true and might improve uTP throughput. For RAM constrained systems, disabling this typically saves around 30kB in user space and probably around 400kB in kernel socket buffers (it adjusts the send and receive buffer size on the kernel socket, both for IPv4 and IPv6).

utp_loss_multiplier

controls how the congestion window is changed when a packet loss is experienced. It's specified as a percentage multiplier for cwnd. By default it's set to 50 (i.e. cut in half). Do not change this value unless you know what you're doing. Never set it higher than 100.

mixed_mode_algorithm

determines how to treat TCP connections when there are uTP connections. Since uTP is designed to yield to TCP, there's an inherent problem when using swarms that have both TCP and uTP connections. If nothing is done, uTP connections would often be starved out for bandwidth by the TCP connections. This mode is prefer_tcp. The peer_proportional mode simply looks at the current throughput and rate limits all TCP connections to their proportional share based on how many of the connections are TCP. This works best if uTP connections are not rate limited by the global rate limiter (which they aren't by default).

see bandwidth_mixed_algo_t for options.

rate_limit_utp

determines if uTP connections should be throttled by the global rate limiter or not. By default they are.

listen_queue_size

the value passed in to listen() for the listen socket. It is the number of outstanding incoming connections to queue up while we're not actively waiting for a connection to be accepted. The default is 5 which should be sufficient for any normal client. If this is a high performance server which expects to receive a lot of connections, or used in a simulator or test, it might make sense to raise this number. It will not take affect until listen_on() is called again (or for the first time).

announce_double_nat

if true, the &ip= argument in tracker requests (unless otherwise specified) will be set to the intermediate IP address, if the user is double NATed. If ther user is not double NATed, this option has no affect.

torrent_connect_boost

the number of peers to try to connect to immediately when the first tracker response is received for a torrent. This is a boost to given to new torrents to accelerate them starting up. The normal connect scheduler is run once every second, this allows peers to be connected immediately instead of waiting for the session tick to trigger connections.

seeding_outgoing_connections

determines if seeding (and finished) torrents should attempt to make outgoing connections or not. By default this is true. It may be set to false in very specific applications where the cost of making outgoing connections is high, and there are no or small benefits of doing so. For instance, if no nodes are behind a firewall or a NAT, seeds don't need to make outgoing connections.

no_connect_privileged_ports

if true (which is the default), libtorrent will not connect to any peers on priviliged ports (<= 1023). This can mitigate using bittorrent swarms for certain DDoS attacks.

alert_queue_size

the maximum number of alerts queued up internally. If alerts are not popped, the queue will eventually fill up to this level. This defaults to 1000.

max_metadata_size

the maximum allowed size (in bytes) to be received by the metadata extension, i.e. magnet links. It defaults to 1 MiB.

smooth_connects

true by default, which means the number of connection attempts per second may be limited to below the connection_speed, in case we're close to bump up against the limit of number of connections. The intention of this setting is to more evenly distribute our connection attempts over time, instead of attempting to connectin in batches, and timing them out in batches.

always_send_user_agent

defaults to false. When set to true, web connections will include a user-agent with every request, as opposed to just the first request in a connection.

apply_ip_filter_to_trackers

defaults to true. It determines whether the IP filter applies to trackers as well as peers. If this is set to false, trackers are exempt from the IP filter (if there is one). If no IP filter is set, this setting is irrelevant.

read_job_every

used to avoid starvation of read jobs in the disk I/O thread. By default, read jobs are deferred, sorted by physical disk location and serviced once all write jobs have been issued. In scenarios where the download rate is enough to saturate the disk, there's a risk the read jobs will never be serviced. With this setting, every x write job, issued in a row, will instead pick one read job off of the sorted queue, where x is read_job_every.

use_disk_read_ahead

defaults to true and will attempt to optimize disk reads by giving the operating system heads up of disk read requests as they are queued in the disk job queue. This gives a significant performance boost for seeding.

lock_files

determines whether or not to lock files which libtorrent is downloading to or seeding from. This is implemented using fcntl(F_SETLK) on unix systems and by not passing in SHARE_READ and SHARE_WRITE on windows. This might prevent 3rd party processes from corrupting the files under libtorrent's feet.

ssl_listen

sets the listen port for SSL connections. If this is set to 0, no SSL listen port is opened. Otherwise a socket is opened on this port. This setting is only taken into account when opening the regular listen port, and won't re-open the listen socket simply by changing this setting.

if this is 0, outgoing SSL connections are disabled

It defaults to port 4433.

tracker_backoff

tracker_backoff determines how aggressively to back off from retrying failing trackers. This value determines x in the following formula, determining the number of seconds to wait until the next retry:

delay = 5 + 5 * x / 100 * fails^2

It defaults to 250.

This setting may be useful to make libtorrent more or less aggressive in hitting trackers.

ban_web_seeds

enables banning web seeds. By default, web seeds that send corrupt data are banned.

max_http_recv_buffer_size

specifies the max number of bytes to receive into RAM buffers when downloading stuff over HTTP. Specifically when specifying a URL to a .torrent file when adding a torrent or when announcing to an HTTP tracker. The default is 2 MiB.

support_share_mode

enables or disables the share mode extension. This is enabled by default.

support_merkle_torrents

enables or disables the merkle tree torrent support. This is enabled by default.

report_redundant_bytes

enables or disables reporting redundant bytes to the tracker. This is enabled by default.

handshake_client_version

the version string to advertise for this client in the peer protocol handshake. If this is empty the user_agent is used

use_disk_cache_pool

if this is true, the disk cache uses a pool allocator for disk cache blocks. Enabling this improves performance of the disk cache with the side effect that the disk cache is less likely and slower at returning memory to the kernel when cache pressure is low.