[JohnBooty]

    If people download the complete file eventually, it should average out

Yes. As supply of the rarer chunks increases, the problems go away.

Notice the implicit fact up there. The uneven distribution of chunks causes problems.

    then the earlier chunks being more available is optimal.

For most use cases, no, the first chunks of the file are not more valuable. Having the first 99 chunks of a Linux .ISO is not valuable at all if you don't have the 100th chunk. The chunks are equally valuable and the chunks are useless unless you have them all.

There are some (or were?) torrent clients that let you start watching incomplete downloads while they're still downloading. This is a dubious use case. I do not notice many people using these nonstandard clients.

Also even for some kind of livestreaming scenario, what are even the "first" chunks? The start of the stream? The stream at the current time? It's probably a moot point anyway because it seems like Bittorrent livestreaming hasn't exactly taken the world by storm but maybe there are uses of it with which I'm not familiar: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=bittorr...

[FeepingCreature]

> For most use cases, no, the first chunks of the file are not more valuable. Having the first 99 chunks of a Linux .ISO is not valuable at all if you don't have the 100th chunk.

Sure but we just established that people are dropping out in mid-watch. For most use cases, people aren't interested in downloading the first chunks first; those cases where they are, and where it doesn't eventually average out, are exactly the cases where the earlier chunks are more important.