In my last post I said I had trouble explaining what Twitter was.  Well, if Twitter is difficult to explain then torrents are even more difficult to describe.   Basically, torrents are a faster way of sharing files with other people. In the Big Book Of BitTorent,  put out by the Make Use of Blog, Saikat Basu explains that torrents says,

“Most of us are more familiar with more conventional forms of file sharing such as email and
FTP. BitTorrent is just another file sharing protocol (a set of rules on how to do things) we
can use. Email and FTP rely on one computer hosting the file and transmitting it to another
connected computer. BitTorrent introduces a major difference – the hosting and the
downloading is spread out over many computers using a technology called Peer-to-Peer. We
can use BitTorrent to share or download any type of files – .exe, mp3, AVI, Jpeg, and Doc
etc…

Hey, stop the muddles before they come on…it‟s not terribly complicated. Here‟s a likeness
of how BitTorrent works…
There is a book I want to read but I have only one chapter with me. I look around and find a
friend who has a few more chapters. It still isn‟t a complete book, so we search for few more
guys around the block who might have the remaining pages. We find a bunch of guys and
though nobody has the complete book, we share the chapters amongst each other till all of
us get a copy of the complete book one by one.
On the internet the “book‟ becomes our file, which is broken up into little pieces or bits. Each
of us has at least one and we download and share these “bits‟ till we have the entire file.
Each piece one of us downloads is available to all the others for upload. Thus we all share
rather than placing the onus on one computer to host the file and distribute it.”

By sharing files this way the download of a large file becomes quick rather than waiting hours for it to download.  BitTorrent can be used for all kinds of files including music and video files.  Basu talks about the legality of some torrents like the ability to find the latest movies in the theater on the internet.  It’s up to you whether you want to download something you know is illegal or not.  I am not sure of the copyright laws regarding television shows but I look at is as a friend taping the show for me to watch on my DVD player later.

The Big Book Of BitTorrent covers many topics to help you understand thoroughly choosing a BitTorrent client, finding torrents, downloading torrents, torrent etiquette and creating your own torrents.  The book is in PDF format so give it some time to load.

I use uTorrent as my BitTorrent client.  I love it.  I also use a few torrent sites to find files to download.  I use BTJunkie as a torrent search engine, Mininova,  Demonoid (now has open registration, otherwise by invite only)  and a site that has British television and radio shows called TheBox which is invite only and I have invites to if you like British television.

I want to thank the people at Make Use Of for offering this book for free (this is a great blog to and I suggest reading it or subscribing to it and Saikat Basu for writing such a clear document that helps the novice understand bittorrents.

So, if you want an invite to TheBox let me know, I have 8 of them please leave a comment and I will send one off to you.

Did the book help you understand BitTorrent? Do you use torrents to download files?  Do you have a favorite BitTorrent client? Site or search engine?  Please share to let others know.

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