For those of you who haven’t heard of the BitTorrent protocol, I’ll take you through a brief introduction. BitTorrent and P2P networks in general spend a lot of time in the news, being demonized, usually, by both the media and venerable organizations such as the RIAA and MPAA. It is claimed, generally, that the P2P networks are responsible for the lion’s share of the illegal trafficking of music, software and movies.
Like any tool, P2P nets like BitTorrent can be misused. This does not mean that the tool is to blame, but the person who wields the tool. There are many legitimate uses for BitTorrent, as it is a fabulous method for sharing large files of any kind, particularly to a vast number of people. With other methods of file distribution, the file is placed in one location, and everyone who wants it connects to grab a copy. This puts a huge strain on the resources of the computer hosting the file, as a separate connection must be initiated for each requester. Bandwidth is usually the bottleneck, resulting in refused connections, and very slow transfer speeds, if not collapse of the network hosting the file if it is extremely popular and proper safeguards haven’t been implemented.
According to Wiki:
To share a file or group of files, a peer first creates a “torrent.” This small file contains metadata about the files to be shared and about the tracker, the computer that coordinates the file distribution. Peers that want to download the file first obtain a torrent file for it, and connect to the specified tracker, which tells them from which other peers to download the pieces of the file.
The torrent file can generally be found on BT websites or newsgroups among other places. The key is that once a few people who have acquired the torrent from a website download pieces of the file, the strain begins to be relieved off the originator. Newcomers to the party actually get the file from the people who downloaded it, bypassing the original computer entirely. This way, the person sharing the file need only upload it a couple times in many cases, and subsequent transfers are handled by an ever-expanding network of participants. The benefits are increased speeds, faster dissemination of the file, and the originator doesn’t even have to stay online for the file to continue to be distributed.
A BitTorrent client is any program that implements the BitTorrent protocol. Each client is capable of preparing, requesting, and transmitting any type of computer file over a network, using the protocol. A peer is any computer running an instance of a client.
BitTorrent is just one type of the P2P (peer-to-peer) file transfer method. In FTP, HTTP, and virtually any other file transfer method, the file is hosted in one spot, as explained above, and everyone grabs from there. This is the primary reason that the copyright enforcement groups hate P2P so much. If there is a website serving copies of Kanye West’s latest insult to music, chances are good that it can be shut down. However, with P2P, there is no central location, just a bunch of people sharing files. However, some sites distributing the torrents HAVE been shut down when it was proven that the offered info was for copyrighted data.
Now, I don’t want you to get the idea that Winextra or myself condone trading copyrighted media, I just wanted everyone to understand BitTorrent, how it works, and why it is popular (and hated in some circles). There are millions of files being traded every day that are perfectly legal, in fact there are even commercial uses for BitTorrent coming to light.
Now that you’ve got a basic handle on how BT works, watch for the reviews of BitTorrent clients. I’ll be reviewing 3 or 4 of them, and allow you to choose the best for yourself.
