What Is Torrent , How Torrent works.

How Torrenting Works

All torrenting takes place using a torrent program. Examples of torrenting programs include uTorrent, Azureus and the original BitTorrent. These programs allow your computer to send and receive files on a specific port and interpret the data from .TORRENT files. .TORRENT files contain all of the information on a specific torrent–who started it, what the torrent contains, and how to download and upload information corresponding to that torrent. When the .TORRENT file is opened by a torrent program, the torrent program connects to other users who have portions of the torrent and downloads the torrent from them. Upon receiving portions of the torrent, your computer becomes able to upload (or “seed”) the file to other users. Once the torrent program has received all portions of the torrent, it assembles them into a file using the directions found in the .TORRENT file.

Basically, a torrent is a way to distribute large files (like high-quality concert recordings and video) in a shared manner. The person offering up the torrent, we’ll use Amy in this example because she just offered the video, creates a torrent file and posts the link to it on a public tracker site. Other people who are interested in it download the torrent file and open it with special torrent software (more on that later) which starts to download chunks of the file from Amy. As people sucessfully download chunks of the file, they start sharing those chunks with other people trying to download the same file from Amy.

So, if there are 10 chunks to the file, I might get chunks 1, 5, and 7 from Amy directly. But if Jeff starts downloading too, then I’d get chunks 2 and 3 from him and give him my chunks 5 and 7. Brian might also be downloading and I’d get 4 and 8 from him and give him 1 and 5. Eventually we all get all the chunks from someone participating in the torrent. Then we keep our software running so that people who came to the game later can download more chunks from us, especially if we have a good network connection (not everyone does this, but it’s very kind to do, so do it if you can).

Doing it distributed like this reduces the demand on Amy’s computer and connection (because all of us aren’t downloading the whole thing from her directly). And because it’s all in chunks, you can stop downloading if you have to use your net connection for something else and start up again later, and the software knows what you still need.

There are a lot of different tracker sites. Amy set up her own at one point for some BNL stuff. Other’s can be limited access or invitation only because of potential legal issues.

So, you need special torrent software to download torrents. On the Mac, I use somthing called BitTorrent (which probably needs to be upgraded). Others can tell what to use on a PC or suggest other Mac software.

Once you download a torrent file, the files within may be in formats that you need to convert before you can listen to them in iTunes or other software (the most popular formats are SHN and FLAC, google those). If you’re downloading video, you’ll probably need DVD burning/converting software.

click here to see a list of popular torrent clients.