You Torrent... but do you know how it works?

BitTorrent transferring, also known as just 'torrenting' has become a huge amount of bandwidth across the world. BitTorrent is one of the most common ways to transfer large files, and it has been estimated that it accounted for roughly 27% to 55% of all Internet traffic as of February 2009. If you think about how many people use the internet and for how long each day, you'll realize how much that is. But let's go to the basics here.


Torrenting, as I previously mentioned, is primarily used to distribute large files without bogging down a single network for all the transfer. If you've ever downloaded a fairly large file from a web server, you've probably noticed that, at times, it can become extremely slow based on the amount of users also downloading the file. Where torrenting comes in, is its unique ability to distribute the data usage across several hosts that can even include old computers.

First, a user creates a file and sends it via website, email, or other medium to a bunch of people who want his data. That user then activates it through a torrent program and starts sending it to the people who are waiting for that file. As the file is sent successfully to the other users, they become what are known as seeders, or users who are also sending the files data to other people. Each person receives segments, or pieces of the file, and then proceed to distribute their pieces to the other downloaders until everyone has every piece, and therefore the whole file. Over time, the original person who created the file may not even be sending it out anymore. Instead, everyone who ever downloaded that file has the option to do it for him. The more people seeding, the better your chances are for higher download speeds.

You'll be able to download the pieces of the file from several users at speeds a single home user could never match even if he wanted to. You see the advantage here? You create networks of people sending more people the file. Now it can be distributed to thousands of people with great ease. Where it'd take you months to send a truly large file to a ton of people, it can be accomplished in hours with the power of torrenting.



If you've never torrented before, or were wondering how to do it, it's actually quite simple. To start, you'll need a program. There are well over 50 different torrent programs, including uTorrent and BitComet among others. You'll need to find yourself a torrent website and start searching for things you want to download. All you have to do is search google for torrent sites.

BitTorrent in-it-of-it-self is not illegal. What's illegal (if it gets there), is the content you download. there are plenty of sites who distribute using torrenting legally. Blizzard had a torrent for a while to distribute patches and updates to their games, for example. Use it how you want to, but at least know what you're doing.

/techie.post