Thread: How exactly torrent works?

I actually download lots of stuff through torrents, and i know basically how torrents work but i am curious to know how exactly it functions with seeds, peers, etc. How can my computer acts as a hub in transmitting the data to another person who is downloading? Can anyone explain in detail?

Torrents work in a fashion very much similar to local network's file and printer sharing.

The first stage is creating a torrent. This must be done the first time by someone. Most Bit Torrent clients allow you to create a torrent. Basically you should gather all your files in one folder (preferable) and create a torrent file out of it. You must specify a tracker for the same. Once the .torrent file is created you can upload this .torrent file to any torrent masters such as mininove, piratebay, etc.

The next step is to load this torrent file in the torrent client (e.g. uTorrent) and it starts seeding.

Anyone looking for the specific file (inside the torrent) or the torrent itself will hit the torrent site thru google search and download the .torrent file. He/she will then load the torrent in the client and the torrent starts downloading - with you being the peer/seed and the other person being the peer/leach.

Over a period of time the torrent contents are downloaded by many and all become eventual seeds. By this time, because of the increased number of seeds, the torrent download speeds also increase.

The contents of the torrent are divided into many pieces of equal size (256KB to 1 MB being most common). Any seeding or downlaoding is done piece by piece. The torrent tracker keeps track of what piece is owned by who. This way, piece by piece, the torrent contents are downloaded until all the pieces are with you. Once done, the torrent client automatically shifts the mode from 'downloading' to 'seeding'.

Info got from howstuffwork

(Howstuffworks "How BitTorrent Works")

# Leeches - People who download files but do not share files on their own computer with others
# Seed or seeder - A computer with a complete copy of a BitTorrent file (At least one seed computer is necessary for a BitTorrent download to operate.)
# Swarm - A group of computers simultaneously sending (uploading) or receiving (downloading) the same file
# .torrent - A pointer file that directs your computer to the file you want to download
# Tracker - A server that manages the BitTorrent file-transfer process

BitTorrent is a protocol that enables fast downloading of large files using minimum Internet bandwidth. It costs nothing to use and includes no spyware or pop-up advertising.

Unlike other download methods, BitTorrent maximizes transfer speed by gathering pieces of the file you want and downloading these pieces simultaneously from people who already have them. This process makes popular and very large files, such as videos and television programs, download much faster than is possible with other protocols.

Unlike some other peer-to-peer downloading methods, BitTorrent is a protocol that offloads some of the file tracking work to a central server (called a tracker). Another difference is that it uses a principal called tit-for-tat. This means that in order to receive files, you have to give them. This solves the problem of leeching -- one of developer Bram Cohen's primary goals. With BitTorrent, the more files you share with others, the faster your downloads are. Finally, to make better use of available Internet bandwidth (the pipeline for data transmission), BitTorrent downloads different pieces of the file you want simultaneously from multiple computers.

* You open a Web page and click on a link for the file you want.
* BitTorrent client software communicates with a tracker to find other computers running BitTorrent that have the complete file (seed computers) and those with a portion of the file (peers that are usually in the process of downloading the file).
* The tracker identifies the swarm, which is the connected computers that have all of or a portion of the file and are in the process of sending or receiving it.
* The tracker helps the client software trade pieces of the file you want with other computers in the swarm. Your computer receives multiple pieces of the file simultaneously.
* If you continue to run the BitTorrent client software after your download is complete, others can receive .torrent files from your computer; your future download rates improve because you are ranked higher in the "tit-for-tat" system.

Downloading pieces of the file at the same time helps solve a common problem with other peer-to-peer download methods: Peers upload at a much slower rate than they download. By downloading multiple pieces at the same time, the overall speed is greatly improved. The more computers involved in the swarm, the faster the file transfer occurs because there are more sources of each piece of the file. For this reason, BitTorrent is especially useful for large, popular files.

A seedbox is a private dedicated server used for the uploading and downloading of digital files.[1] Seedboxes generally make use of the BitTorrent protocol for uploading and downloading, although they have also been used on the eDonkey2000 network. Seedboxes are plugged in to high speed bandwidth networks, often with a throughput of 100 megabits or more. Files are uploaded to a seedbox from other Bittorrent users, and from there they can be downloaded at high speeds to a user's personal computer via the http, ftp, sftp, or rsync protocols.

Seedboxes can run Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X, *BSD, etc. operating systems. More expensive seedboxes provide VNC connection, or remote desktop protocol on some Windows-based seedboxes, allowing many popular bittorrent, newsgroup or edonkey2000 clients to be run on the seedbox remotely. Other seedboxes are special purpose and run variety of torrent specific software including web interfaces of popular clients like Transmission (BitTorrent client), rtorrent and utorrent, as well as the famous TorrentFlux and [TorrentFlux b-4rt] web interface clients. These seedboxes usually have torrent specific rules as well, like say 4 simultaneous torrents as an example. More clients can be found by doing a comparison of bitTorrent software.

Seedboxes on high speed networks are typically able to download large files within minutes. A 1 Gigabyte file can take less than five minutes to download. That same 1 Gigabyte file can be uploaded to other users in the same amount of time, creating a 1:1 upload:download ratio for that individual file. The ability of a seedbox to transfer files so quickly is one of the big attractions seedboxes hold within the downloading community, and within the Bittorrent community in particular.

A2@hotftp.info