Can someone explain bittorrent to me?

[BLiZZaRD]

So I am behind the times right? I still have never once subscribed to an RSS feed, and the 3 that I have ever looked at... whatever I was not over joyed.

Anyway, I have a bittorrent client now, utorrent or something. I have downloaded a torrent file and then downloaded the file I was after in the first place.

Seems a bit many steps to get a file. But then I realized I have no idea how this whole thing works.

Does any one have an idea on the how's and /why's that I could learn from?

[Twey]

Read the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent).

[boxxertrumps]

for those with the "To long, Wont read..." approach, ill sum it up.

A torrent file is a list of files, nothing more.

Othere people with that same torrent file can download the files on that list from the creator's(of the torrent file) computer peice by peice.

Once you have any number of peices, others can download the peices you have from your computer.

"Leechers" are people that close the torrent file after they have all the peices.
"Seeders" are people that leave the torrent file open for a while after they have all the peices.

[Twey]

Leechers are those who share the file whilst still downloading it (so they don't have all the pieces yet), and seeders are those who have finished downloading the file, so have all the pieces.

[BLiZZaRD]

Thanks! I forgot all about wikipedia. I will read that later.

I was just curious how it works as compared to say like FrostWire or those type of P2P services.

[pcbrainbuster]

Well i will simply say never trust p2p service files in terms of exe

[tech_support]

It's actually better than Lamewire.

[Twey]

Oh dear... P2P wars? I'd never even heard of that one.

pcbrainbuster, BitTorrent is a very different kettle of fish from programs like Limewire or KaZaA. With those, it's impossible to verify the source of a download. However, with BitTorrent, the .torrent file (and a checksum of the file itself, so there's no faking it) are downloaded directly from the producer. If you trust the producer's site, you can trust the files downloaded via BitTorrent.

[pcbrainbuster]

I simply was talking about limewire but thanks anyway - heheheheheh :)