What are torrents and how to use them

Torrents send people running for the hills; to most its too complicated, too slow. The truth is, it is complicated, but once you have everything going, its like opening the doors to file sharing heaven.

Follow up:

A torrent system works a little different from how limewire does. When you search in Limewire, the program scouts through other Limewire user files to find what best matches your search. If you choose to download a file, it makes a copy of the other persons (or group of peoples) file and puts it onto your computer.

Torrents work in much the same way. However, a separate file first needs to be downloaded. This separate file, commonly known as a torrent (.torrent) file, has all the information needed to download what you want. Basically, the torrent file is a set of instructions where and what to get. The big benefit of this system is that you can download entire libraries of files, not just one by one.

Here is some basic vocabulary that is commonly used in torrent websites and programs:

Tracker - A tracker is a program, not located on your computer, which keeps track of everyone who is downloading the same torrent. Each torrent file comes with their own instruction to which tracker the torrent belongs to. Using the tracker, the program connects to different peers from which it gets the files.

Leecher/peer - This is the term used for a torrent downloader who is downloading the torrent. This would be you if your not 100% done with the download.

Seed - This is a torrent downloader who completely is finished downloading the files. Now he/she is only distributing.

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