BitTorrent Clients, Trackers and Downloads

All About BitTorrent Clients, Trackers and Downloads

In just a few short years, the peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing protocol BitTorrent has become one of the most popular methods of file sharing on the Internet. With an ever growing amount of legal content available via "Torrents," Downloading BitTorrents has a very bright future.

What makes BitTorrent different than other P2P networks is its extremely efficient distribution method. Unlike other file sharing networks where downloads slow as more and more users download the files, downloads will get faster the more users that are online, downloading and sharing the files. The BitTorrent protocol is currently the amongst the fastest at moving very large files across the Internet.

In order to begin, the first thing you need to track down is a piece of software to act as the BitTorrent Client. Some users recommend uTorrent because of its small size and limited system resource usage. Others prefer the torrent clients, Azureus and BitComet. I recommend you download a couple of different clients and use the one you feel most comfortable with.

BitTorrent clients are easy to install as any other software and very small. Once installed you are just about ready to begin downloading. To find files to download, goto any search engine and search for "Torrent Tracker" or "BitTorrent Tracker."

In order to download a file using BitTorrent, another user must be uploading (also called "seeding" the file with their own torrent client. Choose the file to download, click the link to the .torrent file on the tracker page. This will trigger your installed client to open begin downloading to your computer. The more seeders the file has the faster the download will go. There is a very good chance that others downloading the torrent will be able to see your ip address so be sure to only use BitTorrent for its intended legal purpose.

Another unique aspect is the possibly for the seeder to force others to seed and share. In order to keep BitTorrents working properly everyone must share something. The protocol depends on it. If you share with other users while downloading, your download speeds will increase as you are helping the other users to download.