What is Torrent?
Torrent is a free speech tool.
BitTorrent gives you the same freedom to publish previously enjoyed by only a select few with special equipment and lots of money. ("Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one" -- journalist A.J. Liebling.)
You have something terrific to publish -- a large music or video file, software, a game or anything else that many people would like to have. But the more popular your file becomes, the more you are punished by soaring bandwidth costs. If your file becomes phenomenally successful and a flash crowd of hundreds or thousands try to get it at once, your server simply crashes and no one gets it.
There is a solution to this vicious cycle. BitTorrent, the result of over two years of intensive development, is a simple and free software product that addresses all of these problems.
The key to scaleable and robust distribution is cooperation. With Torrent, those who get your file tap into their upload capacity to give the file to others at the same time. Those that provide the most to others get the best treatment in return. ("Give and ye shall receive!")
Cooperative distribution can grow almost without limit, because each new participant brings not only demand, but also supply. Instead of a vicious cycle, popularity creates a virtuous circle. And because each new participant brings new resources to the distribution, you get limitless scalability for a nearly fixed cost.
Torrent is not just a concept, but has an easy-to-use implementation capable of swarming downloads across unreliable networks. BitTorrent has been embraced by numerous publishers to distribute to millions of users.
With Torrent free speech no longer has a high price.
How It Works
Sharing files
BitTorrent greatly reduces the load on peers with complete copies, because peers with incomplete copies generally download the file from each other. As the colored bars below each client show, the file is downloaded in random order, instead of sequential order.To share a file using BitTorrent, a user creates a .torrent file, a small "pointer" file that contains:
- the filename, size, and the hash of each block in the file (which allows users to make sure they are downloading the real thing)
- the address of a " tracker " server (which is discussed below)
- and some other data.
The torrent file can then be distributed to other users, often via email or placed on a website . The BitTorrent client is then started as a "seed node", allowing other users to connect and commence downloading. When other users finish downloading the entire file, they can optionally "reseed" it--becoming an additional source for the file. One outcome of this approach is that if all seeds are taken offline, the file may no longer be available for download, even if the torrent file is possessed. However, even if there are no seeds, as long as there is at least one distributed copy of the file everyone can eventually get the complete file.
Downloading with BitTorrent is straightforward. Each person who wants to download the file first downloads the torrent and opens it in the BitTorrent client software. The torrent file tells the client the address of the tracker, which, in turn, maintains a log of which users are downloading the file and where the file and its fragments reside. For each available source, the client considers which blocks of the file are available and then requests the rarest block it does not yet have. This makes it more likely that peers will have blocks to exchange. As soon as the client finishes importing a block, it hashes it to make sure that the block matches what the torrent file said it should be. Then it begins looking for someone to upload the block to.
BitTorrent gives the best download performance to the people who upload the most, a property known as " leech resistance ", since it discourages "leeches" from trying to download the file without uploading it to anyone. (Although, confusingly, when used in opposition to "seeds" or "seeders" as in "S/L ratio" (meaning "seed/leech ratio"), "leecher" only means someone who hasn't downloaded the full file yet.)
Though BitTorrent is a good protocol for a broadband user, it is less effective for dial up connections, where disconnections are common.
What Do You Need to have to download?
To download a file using the bittorrent system you need a client or program, a good one is ABC
If you are having problems downloading here are some good sites to check out