What are torrent?
Torrents are (P2P – Peer to Peer) software that is used for sharing files in P2P network environments. For running/using torrents you need to install a specialized P2P software.
Protocol is used to transfer torrent files. BitTorrent Protocol is a most popular and common protocol used by Torrent clients for large data file sharing. This Protocol was also created by Bram Cohen, April 2001 when creating BitTorrent (torrent client).
What is P2P? –
P2P -> Peer-to-Peer is a network of computers that communicate with each other using specialized P2P software.
What is a tracker?
A tracker is a server that helps communicate between peers (you and other people using the client), in fact, acts as a medium for all peers to communicate. It is mainly used to get information about peers and other statistics.
What is in the torrent file?
The torrent file contains multiple trackers and the URL of the tracker and metadata of the shared files. If you edit only one torrent file, you will see some un-understandable garbage data across the entire file. This is because the torrent files are encoded with ‘barcode’.
The concept of seeders and leachers
Seeders are people who have already downloaded the file (in whole or in part) and are open for upload i.e allow others to download.
The leachers are the people who are downloading the file. Therefore, they sow as much seed as they can download.
How does a torrent actually work?
The main feature of the Torrent Client is that it can download large files without heavy load on the network and server computer and uses P2P network to get the job done.
Instead of connecting to a single server host on the network, the Torrent client connects to a large group of hosts to download and upload a file together. Each host on the network treats the client as well as the server.
Let’s take a small example -:-
You want to download a 50 MB file and you are open to upload the same file as well. Now this 50 MB file is actually divided into small parts.
Say 100 parts of 0.50 MB each.
You are downloading the file and say it is 2% complete. In the 2% of your completion you have say 3 of 100 parts as done.
Now for those 10 completed parts your torrent client will act as seeder and for rest 90 parts your torrent client will act as leecher.
This feature allows users to download and upload files to multiple recipients, even with lower bandwidth.
To upload the file, the person first creates a torrent file that can be distributed to FTP, HTTP, etc .. Then the file is hosted on his machine and acts as a bit-torrent node and works as a seed. Other people with the torrent file can give it to their own bittorrent node that works for peer, seed, leech. Then the file is downloaded by connecting it to other seeds, peers.
What the Torrent Client does first is to get initial access to the peer data from the tracker URL (located in the torrent file), then start downloading the Torrent Client file after getting the peer information. Files shared with Torrent are converted into pieces / pieces. These fragments are small files that are easy to transfer. This is done so that we can download each piece from a separate peer thus increasing the speed of transfer and a lower chance of corruption.
The authenticity of each file part is verified by a Crypto Graphic hash contained in the torrent file. During the entire transfer, the Torrent Client often checks the tracker URL for peer status (new peer attachment) .. Once the peer download is completed, it becomes seeded.
The health of the torrent depends on the user’s leachers-to-seeders conversion.
Downloading And Installing Torrents // specialized Torrent Software-Client
The first thing we need is a torrent client 1. http://www.bittorrent.com/ 2. http://www.utorrent.com/
Find the next thing that is hosting our favorite torrent. You should now be able to download something. Just open the torrent file from the above sites in your favorite torrent software.
Depending on your Torrent Client software you can swing around the settings for your needs such as increasing the volume, increasing the volume, etc.
