Transfer policy management methods in a peer-to-peer networking environment such as BitTorrent are provided. A download TPM maximizes the usage of available bandwidth, while focusing on as few torrents as possible. For a given list of torrents, a peer in accordance with the present invention determines how many download connections to maintain at a given time in order to maximize usage of bandwidth. If the variance of per-connection bandwidths exceeds a threshold, more connections are added until either variance does not exceed the threshold or a maximum number of connections are established. A seeding peer determines when to reduce the number of files being seeded by monitoring its average upload rate per torrent. If its average rate falls below a threshold, then the peer stops seeding a file. The file that the peer stops seeding is one to which the peer is making the smallest overall contribution.