Introduction to Bittorrent Protocol
If you're not sure what bittorrent is, you're missing out on the most popular form of peer to peer sharing on the net. Understanding what this technology is, what it accomplishes and what makes it special requires some basic understanding of the Internet.
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Client-server
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When you accessed this website, the text and pictures on the page were downloaded from a single computer---the one hosting the web site. This is called the client-server model of Internet file distribution. The client-server method is how most information online is transferred, and is simple to understand. One "server" hosts files, from which "clients" can download them. This can be a website with text, pictures, music and even movies.
P2P
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But it's not the only way of distributing information online. The peer-to-peer method, or "P2P" for short, is another possibility. This model of information distribution makes the "clients" essentially "servers." This means that any file you download you share when the download is done. The main advantage of this is that large amounts of information can be shared without the need to maintain and operate a single server; instead, all the users accessing the data act as servers on their own. This is what we refer to as "file sharing."
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Usage
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Bittorent is the world's foremost P2P technology. It is used to distribute free movies and operating systems such as Linux, but also used to distribute illegal files such as movies, games and music. It's important to note that no information is stored on a "bittorrent" server at any time; rather, when a user begins downloading a file their computer immediately shares the pieces of the file already competed. This means that every "client" is acting as a "server" however much of the file they've managed to download.
.torrent file
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Unlike P2P programs such as Limewire, Bittorrent clients do not include a "search" function to find files on a single, dedicated network. Rather, bittorrent users download ".torrent" files and load them with their bittorrent application of choice. These files connect bittorrent applications to the client, which in turn connects users to each other.
Trackers
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A tracker's role in bittorrent, in addition to typically hosting the .torrent files for downloading, is to direct bittorrent applications toward users downloading the same file. While none of the information being downloaded via bittorent is transferred through the tracker's servers, the tracker does direct users' computers toward each other for the download to happen. The tracker connects clients to each other so that clients can facilitate the download on their own.
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