Flashget

Some of you might be familiar with flashget. Its the coolest download manager every to be created. Recently they have added torrent support also and now Flashget is irresistible. I myself am a flashget user for the last 10 years.

Utorrent

Its the most popular torrent client. It is very small in size (~1mb) and has got all the necessary features. Recently utorrent released their webUI using which users can control their torrent downloads remotely. Its a very cool application and Id suggest that you give this a try before you decide upon your torrent client.

BitLord

A popular tool that has a built-in torrent search engine…you may never need to use a torrent search web site ever again with this product. BitLord is also very light weight. Whenever you download using bitlord, other applications might feel a shortage of bandwidth.

Azureus

Azureus is a java based client and hence it works fine on both Linux and Windows. Its the most extensive Torrent client available and you need to be a real expert to take full advantage of its features. Its a bit heavy to operate and takes time to load or close.

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A tracker is a server that aids in communication between peers who download files off the torrent network. For a client to download files from the torrent network, its necessary that it connect to a tracker first. Without a tracker the client cannot initiate the download.

The tracker provides the client with information regarding the peers who has pieces of the file its trying to download. Once a client gets the information it will contact the peers directly and then download pieces from it. The client contacts the server periodically updating its status and getting information about new clients.

Trackers are of two types, public tracker and private tracker. Anyone can connect to a public tracker and get information regarding the files it tracks. But private trackers are password protected. Private torrents are used to maintain the quality of clients. Some private trackers are invitation only. Some have upload ratio that needs to be maintained by the client to be able to be a member.

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Downloading files off the torrent network is a 2 step process. First you have to download the index file for the file you want to download. Then you feed the index file to the client and the client starts the original download.

Most of the time people download the index file and says that they downloaded the file, it was very fast and couldn’t open the file.

The index file or the torrent file contains information regarding the servers that track the original file that we want to download. Those servers are called trackers and they track the users who has got particular files. Our download client contacts the server to get a list of the users with the file and then connects directly to the users and downloads the files.

Some advanced technologies are now eliminating the need for centralised trackers. DHT is a technology in which peers communicate with each other propagating the data needed about the availability of the files with out a tracker.

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I hope you have understood the basics of torrents from the previous post. If you have not, wait for the coming posts. For the time being lets stop bull shitting and do some practical stuff. Lets install a torrent client.

A torrent client is a like a download manager for torrents. But slightly different in the way it operates and downloads the files. A torrent client uses the bit torrent protocol to download the file. The best torrent client I have ever used is flashget.

Download Flashget from here

Flashget was a normal download manager. Its only recently that they added the bit torrent protocol also to it. Right now its the best download manager available with loads of features.

Download and install the program. We will cover how to download a file from the torrent network in the next post.

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Sharing is a social activity and hence its there on the internet also. Some forms of sharing files are considered illegal, but lets not discuss about that. Suppose you need a file, it may be a movie, mp3 or some software. Lets take for example, the latest Micheal Moore documentary. Its almost certain that many people already have it on their computers.

Torrents are a means for them to share the file so that others on the internet also can download it. Now whats so special about it ? We all can download files from a server, whats the difference when we are using torrents ?

When you are downloading the Micheal Moore documentary from a server, the entire 700MB is served from the same server. When 1000 people download the file, 700 X 1000 MB gets transferred from the server. 700 GB is a lot of data transfer. And many server admins might not like the idea since it will cost them a lot.

Torrents distribute the downloading process. If I am downloading a file using the torrent network, Im not downloading the file from a single server. Instead I am download various parts of the file from different users on the internet. My download client will rejoin the pieces when all pieces are downloaded.

Considering the previous example, if the same file is distributed using a torrent network the total usage on the server is drastically reduced. Every downloader acts as a server also distributing the pieces he downloads to other new downloaders. So when 1000 people have downloaded the file, we have 1000 servers for the same file.

Torrents reduce the load on the server. It improves the availability of  the file since many people will be having the same file and is sharing it. So even if some of the servers go down, we will still be able to download the file from other servers/downloaders.

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Many of you might this is a simple topic. Yes it is a simple topic, but still there are many who are unaware of the world of file sharing. The inspiration to write this post is a junior of mine. She wanted some files and I said they are in the torrent network. But She didn’t know what torrents were and had no idea how to download files using the torrent network.

I decided to teach her and it took me 2 hours of gmail chat. The topics for this post series is based on the questions she had about the whole concept of torrent based file sharing. We will discuss the following areas in the post series.

Torrents and File Sharing – Introduction
The Client – Flashget
The Process has got 2 steps
What is a tracker
Some other clients
Torrent Indexing sites
Remote Control your download

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