How to use BitTorrent

Posted on March 27, 2007 at 8:08 pm

BitTorrent is a Peer-To-Peer protocol for file sharing. Bittorrent is a way to distribute large amounts of data without the original distributor having bear the entire cost of hardware, resources, etc. With Bittorrent, instead of one person distributing the files to everyone, as more and more people recieve the files, they also become distributors. Eventually, after the file has been downloaded to many computers, a new download may get bits and pieces of the file from hundreds of users.

This method of file sharing reduces the burden on any one particular source and ensures redudancy becuase a download is not depending on only one source having the file.

A BitTorrent client is a program that uses the BitTorrent protocol and is capable of creating, requesting and transferring any computer file over the network. In order to share files with other, a peer (computer wil BitTorrent software installed) creates a “torrent”. A torrent is a small file that contains meta data about which files are to be shared and the tracker, the computer that coordinates the file distriution.

In order to use BitTorrent to download files, you need to install a BitTorrent client on your computer first. Here is a list of clients:1. uTorrent - This is my favorite becuase it’s tiny (only 640KB) and it works great! It also has an RSS reader now, so you can browse around also while downloading.

2. Azureus – This is another popular BitTorrent client based on Java. It has a much nicer interface along with high resoultion content. Also a good choice.

Once you have installed your BitTorrent client, you need to find the torrents! You have several choices of which I’ll mention just two:

1. Torrentz.com – Type in your query and you’ll get a large listed sorted in order from top to bottom in terms of largest number of seeders. Seeders are basically people who have the files on their computers and are uploading the file to others. The more seeders, the faster the download. You’ll get a list of sites that are tracking the file, so click on one of the sites on the list and it’ll open that page with the link to download the torrent.

2. ISOHunt.com – Another good site, however be warned that all of these sites except a certain type of user and therefore you will see lots of nice “sex” related ads on the pages. They are not complete porn, but some are close!

Click Download Torrent and the file will automatically open in your BitTorrent client! And that’s it! It usually takes a little while for the speed to become faster because using BitTorrent, the program has to find other peers and that takes time.

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