> >> I think there is still a case for attempting percent limiting. I > >> agree with your point that we can not discover the full bandwidth of > >> the link and adjust to that. The approach discovers the current > >> available bandwidth and adjusts to that. The usefullness is in > >> trying to be unobtrusive to other users.
> > The problem is that Wget simply doesn't have enough information to be > > unobtrusive. Currently available bandwidth can and does change as new > > downloads are initiated and old ones are turned off. Measuring > > initial bandwidth is simply insufficient to decide what bandwidth is > > really appropriate for Wget; only the user can know that, and that's > > what --limit-rate does. > So far, I'm inclined to agree. > > For instance, if one just sticks "limit_percent = 25" in their wgetrc, > then on some occasions, Wget will limit to far too _low_ a rate, when > most of the available bandwidth is already being consumed by other things. ... Well, if you are using 25% then you are trying to be *really* nice and there's no such thing as "far too low", is there. The scenario I was picturing was where you'd want to make sure some bandwidth was left available so that unfair routers wouldn't screw your net-neighbors. I really don't see this as an attempt to "be unobtrusive" at all. This is not an attempt to hide one's traffic, it's an attempt to not overwhelm in the presence of unfair switching. If I say --limit-pct 75% and the network is congested, yes, what I want is to use no more than 75% of the available bandwidth, not the total bandwidth. So, yes, if the network is more congensted just now, then let this download get a lower bitrate, that's fine. Tony
