Q&A about Torrents

For today’s post i decided to do an informative article about torrents.They constitute about  roughly 43% to 70% of all traffic in the internet. At any given point of time , torrents have an user rating of more than that of facebook and youtube combined.

Here are some general questions I have answered about torrents

Q:What are torrents?

A:Torrents or Bittorrents is a protocol for sharing files over the internet through a peer-to-peer system.Peer-to-peer basically means that the file is shared through personal computers rather than 1 main server.

Q:Who created Torrents?

A:Bittorents were first designed by Programmer Bram Cohen in April 2001 and released the first available version on July 2, 2001. It is now being maintained by Cohen’s company, BitTorrent, Inc.

Q:How do Torrents Work?

A:A torrent breaks a large file into different pieces ,when a person downloads a file he becomes a ‘leecher’.While Downloading the file,the user also shares the pieces he has with other people downloading the same file.After downloading the complete file , the user can continue sharing the file , and he is now known as a ‘seeder’.At the same time a file called a tracker distributed by the server ,tracks the amount of leechers and seeders , and also  the pieces of the file required by each leecher.

For A Detailed Explanation look at the video below:

Q:Is downloading Torrents Legal?

A:Yes, downloading torrents is perfectly legal.However ,using torrents to download softwares,movies,music,etc. that are copyrighted or you have to pay for is very much illegal.

Q:What torrent client should I use?

A:There are many torrent clients out there , buy my personal best 3 picks are:

1. Tixati: User friendly,good for beginners.
2. μtorrent: Light-weight, the most popular torrent client.
3. Vuze: Plays HD videos,music, good UI.