[b]Basics of Bittorrent[/b] Bittorrent is a type of p2p file tranmission and works quite differently to any other p2p applications out there. unlike most p2p applications like kazaa or imesh, bittorrent does not rely on users searching for files in a central application. This method of finding files to download has many downsides, including the need for other users of the p2p network to make public a list of files that they have on their computers. Recently various organisations world wide have sued users of these networks for sharing their illegal files, which put many people off sharing and severely damaged the networks themselves. Bittorrent is different to those other p2p applications in several ways, the most obvious one being that there is no intergrated file search facility within most clients so it is clear that any files on your computer cannot be seen by anyone connecting to it. Before you can download a file with bittorrent you have to find a website that has a small file (with a .torrent file extension) that contains all of the information your bittorrent client needs to download the larger download. For the most part these torrent files are found on websites, either listing sites or forums that require membership (we will come back to them later). Once you have found the torrent file you wish to find and loaded it with a bittorrent client, your computer will be connected to a tracker that will recall all of the information on who else is downloading the torrent, how much of it they collectively have and how many people have the completed torrent and are still uploading the file. With this information, your computer can start downloading the torrent as it will be able to start connecting to other users and get various pieces of the torrent they have. Any torrent will be divided up into a series of pieces, each the same size, which will be downloaded one by one from other computers connected to the tracker your file is on. The size of these pieces will depend on how big a torrent is and can be any size (the biggest I have seen is 4MB). Since the torrent is broken up into pieces, it is possible for users that have part of the torrent to upload the pieces they have already got to other users. This will increase the overall transfer speed, which means you can get files faster. There are three types of users when using Bittorrent, seeds, peers and leechers: [b]seeds[/b] seeds have 100% of a torrent and have remained connected to the tracker so they can upload pieces to other users. Seeds are the most important users since they unable other users to get 100% of a torrent, which is why once you have got all of a torrent you should remain connected for a while to ensure other people get the complete file as well. [b]peers[/b] peers are downloading a torrent, but do not have all of the pieces yet. Peers are uploading pieces they have already downloaded as they get the rest of the torrent and thus increase the overall download speed. [b]leechers[/b] leechers will download a torrent but will have stopped their client from uploading any of the torrent that they have already got. Because they contribute nothing to the torrent, they are bad for a torrent and if they are a member of a forum that imposes a minimum share ratio, stopped from downloading torrents. [u]You can download bittorent here:[/u] [url]http://www.bittorrent.com/download.html[/url] [url]http://azureus.sourceforge.net/download.php[/url] [url]http://www.utorrent.com[/url]

Last edited by Ephemeral (2008-10-09 05:47:33)