[nix0n]

If multiple users download in sequential order, wouldn't that actually make it pretty likely that the previous downloader would have the chunk that the next downloader is looking for?

Or is there a specific advantage to random order?

[TonyTrapp]

With clients constantly appearing and disappearing, the probability that you will be able to finish the download will be much higher if everyone has a random collection of file parts. Imagine the original seeder goes away after one day. Everyone is stuck at 99% because they downloaded in sequential order. Nobody has the last missing part. This would be much less likely if the clients had downloaded random parts instead, because every part would be roughly equally likely to be available in the end.

[the8472]

see http://bittorrent.org/bittorrentecon.pdf section 2.4.2

[nix0n]

Thanks! That answers my question.

For anyone who doesn't feel like clicking on a PDF, the section title is "Rarest First".