Bittorrent - A Beginner's Guide
For those of you in the dark on Bittorrent, it is time to come out and give it a try. If you remember Napster, Kazaa, and have even tried Limewire, then bittorrent downloading might be the next step for you to take.
There is no spyware, system slowing applications, fear of exposing files, or other things to worry about. It just takes a bit more understanding to get it to work.
How It Works
Basically, it is a peer to peer network (P2P) just like Napster was. There are computers/servers out there that are acting as trackers. They maintain information about who has files to download. When someone requests this file, it puts them in contact with the other computers who have the file and are available to downlaod from. The computer can then download parts from all the other users and assemble it into one file on his end.
One of the side benefits of the bittorrent networks is that while you are downloading you are also sharing the file out. So the more popular the file is, the more people there are to share it and the faster it downloads (generally). It has incredibly high performance for the content in highest demand.
A Bittorrent Client
You need to install bittorrent client on the computer you want to download to. There are a host of them out there. I have used Azureus for the past year and was using before that. The popular one now seems to be Wikipedia article on bittorrent clients. Pick one and install it.
Finding Trackers
This is the other key component. Once your PC or Mac has a bittorrent client installed, you then need to find some trackers. There are a number of different websites that provide access to .torrent files. These are the files that outline the address of the tracker and other pertinent details to the download.
These sites maintain a list of torrents that you can search and some have neat categorizing and sorting options. These sites have been getting shutdown in the recent past however. The MPAA takes legal action and goes after them one by one. Fortunately, more spring to life as soon as one is closed.
Two Styles of Tracker Sites
There are free to use sites where you just search and download the torrent files to your computer. There are ratio sites as well that have criteria requirements. You must create an account, which aren't given out all the time. Afterwards, whenever your download something, the size is recorded and you have to upload an equal or other amount to have a good ratio of upload to download. Having a ratio greater than 1 is ideal for most sites (you upload more than you download).
The ratio sites (like bitmetv.org) are more restrictive, but tend to have higher quality files and the downloads are extremely fast. I will hit around 100 kilobytes/second on mininova.com, but on bitmetv.org I have hit 1000 kilobytes/second very often. A 1 hour show can be downloaded in 5 minutes in very good quality.
What Are Some Tracking Sites
Some of my personal favourite sites are...
- BTJunkie.org
- Mininova.org
- TorrentSpy.com
- isoHunt.org
- bitmetv.org (ratio site)
Search these sites for video, audio, text, applications, and other materials. If you bittorrent client is installed, you be able to open the torrent links and your computer will open the file using your bittorrent client. It will start the download process and you are good to go.
Conclusion
Once you have downloaded your first file, you will be addicted. Be careful of you bandwidth though. It is easy to get a call from you ISP if you are moving too much data. Try playing with the settings of your bittorrent client as well. You can throttle your upload/download speeds and set a host of other options to make sure the program does not become to "busy".
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