Maximum PC

I notice when there are more Seeders than Leechers, I get great downloading rates but when the Leechers outnumbers the Seeders the bandwidth is not near as good. Is this the way it is supposed to be? If so, can someone explain the reason why? Thanks.

a couple reasons; The main one being bandwidth priority. If you're leeching you're using up most of the bandwidth on the download and only a fraction of bandwidth for outgoing data (or upload). Multiply this concept times however many people are leeching and collectively the throughput of 'outgoing' data is a lot less.
If someone is Seeding they have all the available bandwidth allocated to uploading (theroetically). Some of these factors are affected by the users settings in the bit torrent client but the concept should be clear.

Also, if you have a ton of people Leeching and much fewer people Seeding there's a good chance that many of you will have identical "pieces" of the data. It's up to those much fewer Leechers with the missing data to prioritize and send that missing data your way. This also reduces the speed at which your file downloads.

I'm sure someone may add or clarify to this, but the gist is there.

you can usually tweak your bittorrent client a bit to improve speeds, especially if you've got a high bandwidth connection, you can run have a much higher # of connections and connected peers.

I always see posts next to the torrent file from other downloaders requesting people to "seed" as much as they can. Obviously seeding is part of the process where people make files on their pc available to download.

Am I to assume leechers are the people downloading the torrent??

You are correct in your assumption.

Seeders = Computers that have the complete file

Leachers = Computers that do not have the complete file (ie ones that are still downloading the file)

Leechers (good name)