Seeds & Leechs Determining DL speed?

Question

Can someone please explain seeds and leeches in terms of torrents and how they affect the DL speed?

Answer 1

well seeds and leeches, is in refference to bittorrent programs. and a seed is someone who has finished downloading, and is continuing to supply uploads to other bittorrent users. which is contributing to a faster download speed. but a leech is some one who is downloading but is not uploading. which selfishly sucks up some of the speed of downloading of others, by not contributing to the uploading. and if you get more than a couple of leeches, depending on how many are downloading. it can dramaticly decrease your rate of download.