A lot of companies are beginning to offer downloads via BitTorrent so we thought it was about time we gave you the lowdown on how to get started with this filesharing method.
BITTORRENT used to be a dirty word but because it makes it possible to distribute large files without dramatically sapping network bandwidth and server time, it is slowly becoming popular among organisations that want a cheap way to distribute their data.
It is not surprising that the open-source communities were the first few to adopt the use of BitTorrent – you can find most distributions of Linux and OpenOffice.org for download via this system.
OpenOffice.org is an office suite – the main and probably only good competition to Microsoft Office – and is one of the best seeded (hosted) and fastest torrent available for download, we usually use it to test if our BitTorrent connection is up to speed.
We just cannot imagine downloading it from a regular server anymore.
In the game space, even Blizzard Entertainment – the maker of World of Warcraft – is testing BitTorrent as a viable option for releasing their beta programs.
According to Blizzard, it is considering BitTorrent because downloading files from the Internet can be time consuming and is often limited by the host’s available bandwidth.
But by using BitTorrent, the user will not be limited by any one host’s capabilities – instead the files are distributed across a wide range of users, allowing for a quicker download for everyone.
When you download a file via BitTorrent, you also become the host for it and will upload the file to other downloaders also known as peers (or “leechers” if you download the file without uploading it).
So, as more people download the file, there is no additional burden on the computer hosting the file (also called the seed), which was the bane of the client-server model.
And once you complete downloading the file, you too can seed the file, making it possible for others to download the file even faster, which is why it is possible to download really big files in a jiffy.
