BitTorrent (Usually referred to as torrent) is a protocol that supports P2P (Peer to Peer) sharing that specializes in transferring large files over the internet. It currently transfers more than 50{463c70c279fb908728b910a090d44fbe4ae7aabcd875de9c1a518a8c8e2be8bd} of the file sharing bandwidth in the world. Torrent clients are programs that allow the use of the BitTorrent protocol. It downloads the files part by part and pieces the together after the download finishes. Due to these parts being downloaded one at a time it will give torrents advantages over the normal HTTP or FTP, as it can stop and resume the download easily. This kind of P2P file transfer allows the bandwidth of download to be very fast even when there is not a large server. Once the file is complete the user who has the whole file becomes a “seed” someone who uploads for a “leech” someone who downloads. It is possible to seed and leech at the same time as you can give away the parts that you have already downloaded to others. The health of a torrent is usually displayed; this tells you how much of the file is available for you to download. (Ex. If the health is 50 that means, of all people seeding combined there is only 50{463c70c279fb908728b910a090d44fbe4ae7aabcd875de9c1a518a8c8e2be8bd} of the file available for download and the rest is missing). There are many sites dedicated to sharing torrent files; torrent files are files which store information about the torrent – such as the description and tracker. There are many sites that host torrents of files that the owner does not have the copyrights to distribute. The act of taking a copyright file without the permission of the distributer and passing it to others from a BitTorrent file is called ‘pirating’ and is illegal and punishable by law.
[breadcrumb]March 30, 2017