Torrents – Your all in one torrent guide
If you are a frequent internet user and a download freak, you must have heard about torrents and their usage. But newbies may not be familiar with this term “TORRENT“. Thus, this article is dedicated to noobs who have no or very less knowledge about P2P Networks. Even if you are a pro, We suggest you to read this article and help us improving it by leaving your valuable comments.
So, lets start from basics :
What is a Torrent ?
Torrent or BitTorrent is actually a protocol which is used in peer to peer file sharing networks. But in laymen usage, It is generally a instance of a file or a group of files distributed using BitTorrent Protocol.
Why do I need to use Torrents ?
Using torrents is not any compulsion or any kind of standard set for a person’s personality. The basic reason for using torrents is blazing fast speeds which can not be obtained from a direct server to client connection / transmission.
Explanation – When you download a file directly from a server, A single server sends you a required file. But imagine a case when thousands of users are requesting the same file from the server at the same moment. In that case, that server may go down, or you may get low speeds. But after you know how a torrent stream works, this thing will become more clearer to you. When you download a file or files using torrents, all the Peers are serving you pieces of that file, so apparently all those peers become small servers for you and thus can practically serve unlimited bandwidth throughput from downloaders.
How torrents work ?
Just imagine this scenario, guy “A” uploaded a torrent file on any torrent meta search engine. Now you download that torrent file, and start downloading the contents of that torrent file which are right now stored in the machine of the guy who uploaded the torrent file. Now that guy “A” serves you those files and while you were downloading those files, one more person “C” started downloading those files. As of now, “A” is serving to “C” and you. After your download is complete, you become a Seeder. As of now, there are 2 seeds (“A” and you) and 1 peer (“C”). After you start seeding, 3 more persons started downloading that file so now, you and the guy “A” are both serving those files and making it available for others. So in this way, the number of seeders keep increasing which is commonly referred as Health of that torrent. The higher the ratio of seeds to peers, more healthier is the torrent. But now a case arises that What if you downloaded that file and removed it from your torrent client. This is called Leeching.
Clear your basics about all these terms at :
Here is a very nice video explanation by BitTorrent Community on How torrents work :
How do I download a file using Torrents ?
In order to download the contents of a torrent file, you need to download a Torrent Client like μTorrent, BitTorrent, Vuze, Tixati, Transmission etc.
Few things about bittorrent clients
Few things about bittorrent clients
μTorrent is the most famous and recommended of all the torrent clients due to its simplicity, small filesize (<1MB) and simplicity. It is available for free on its official website which also offers a PLUS version with some extended features.
Vuze is also very good bittorrent client and comes with awesome features and design. Basically all the clients are similar because they are intend to perform the same task.
BitTorrent Inc. also provides bittorrent application which works as a torrent client. It is as simple as μTorrent itself.
Tixati is what I use personally. Basically due to its UI and strict rules of bandwidth usage. It works efficiently while resuming very large torrents and it is free, of course like all others.
Transmission is very common in a few Linux based systems as it comes inbuilt within those Operating Systems.
Read fully detailed comparison of BitTorrent Clients at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_BitTorrent_software
Follow these simple steps to download a torrent using μTorrent :
1 Download and Install μTorrent or any other client first.
2 Go to a trusted and safe torrent website like Kickass.to or torrentz.eu or PirateBay
3 Search for what you need to download – be specific and ignore useless terms
For example if you want to download Ubuntu, search for “Ubuntu” or “Ubuntu 14” instead of “Download ubuntu for free”
4 From the list of results, choose any one which has good number of seeds and upvotes or real comments.
5 Click on “download torrent” and your browser will save a file with extension .torrent. Click on that file or drag and drop it on μTorrent window and it will ask you where to save file. Let it be default if it wont bother you and click OK.
6 You will see that μTorrent has started to download the files and so and so time remaining and many more info about the connected peers and stats about the torrent.
7 After the download is finished, you can open and use the file. But don’t forget to seed it 😉
The downloading process remains same for all the operating systems irrespective of the torrent client used.
Please check out this Presentation about detailed advantages, disadvantages, security threats and copyright issues about torrents.