BitTorrent

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Revision as of 02:01, 9 April 2008 by Leunga5 (Talk)
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BitTorrent is a peer to peer file sharing protocol. The protocol works in a way such that there is not a single host distributing the file, instead, all users downloading the file also share in uploading as well. This reduces the burden on resources by the distributer as all users wishing to download the content are taking part in uploading pieces and parts of the data file.

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How It Works

The method allows essentially any kind of data to be distributed in a manor such that all users downloading the same file, referred as leechers, will upload bits and parts of the file that they have already downloaded. Users that have the complete file and still connected to the tracker are referred as seeders. The tracker is simply a list of all users that are currently connected to the torrent of interest, while categorizing the number of leechers and seeders to determine the healthiness of the torrent.

Users download "torrent" files that are created specifically for the file to be distributed. Using a bittorrent client, the user opens the torrent file which contains the URL of the tracker that the torrent was published to, and attempt to connect to the tracker. If the tracker is up and running,

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