Thread: Tell me about TORRENTS..

Originally Posted by Casualtie

I've heard from many people that the best and fastest way to get free media is to use torrents. I've tried to figure out how to use them on my own before, but could never get anything I wanted.

I've searched via Google plenty of times to try and figure out how these things work, but can't seem to find a Torrent 101. I'd like to be able to find a sit where I can download full music albums. Anyone able to explain how to go about doing it?

Thanks.

Download uTorrent*.

Run it (to register .torrent file extension association).

Close it.

Go to IsoHunt.com**.

Search for an album.

Go for a entry with high seeders (S) and ideally high leechers (L) too. (Seeders have 100% of the file already and are uploading it; leechers are uploading the bits they have and downoading the bits they don't).

Click "Download .torrent"

Firefox: Click "Open". Not sure about IE, I'm guessing it's the same; Opera has an acceptable inbuilt torrent but you can use uTorrent if you spend 10 seconds in Preferences.

Download your album.

You can seed after you finish downloading. You don't have to, "but it helps the community". Usually get a share ratio of ~ 1.0 and you've done your bit.


*Or Azureus if you aren't using Windows.

**This is my favourite. There's TorrentSpy as well, and PirateBay which I've always found somehow confusing, but, eh.

BitTorrent is a peer to peer protocol for distributed downloading

The important bit here, is the "distributed" bit
you do not need a ridiculous infrastructure to host files

You have a large file (say, 100Mb) that many people want (say, 100 people)

the traditional (client / server) way of getting that file to others is to host the file on the net
and let others download it directly

100 people (who do not know about each other) each downloading 100Mb from you means your pushing out 10Gb of data

additionally, you are going to need a super fast connection in order to give reasonable download speeds to your people

Say, 1 person at a time can download the file from you in 1 hour
then 100 people at the same time would each take 100 hours to get the file
You need a connection speed 100 times that of your downloaders for them to get full speed

That's expensive.

The big advantage with distributed downloading, is that all the downloaders "know" about each other

The distributed way of hosting the file (BitTorrent, and others) is to split the file up into lots of little pieces.
Then some people download some of the pieces from the host.

Some more people want to download those pieces as well. Now they have a choice about who they download them from (the original host, or the people who've already got the pieces)

All the downloaders download all the pieces from everybody else

The original host can get away with only uploading 100Mb of data (as opposed to the 10Gb as above)
Once all the pieces are "out there", everybody grabs bits from everybody else until everybody has all the pieces