With the rapid progression and expansion of computers over the last decade, the Internet has become a part of daily life for billions of people around the world. The Internet has opened many gateways for technology and communication over its lifetime but none quite so much as torrent sharing. Torrent sharing consists of uploaders and downloaders who each have a copy of a particular torrent that allows them to share a specific movie, game, song, document, image, or program. This article will explain what a torrent is, how to use torrents, and some common terms found in the torrent sharing world.
What is a Torrent
A torrent is a file that allows many different users to transfer content by downloading from multiple sources at once. A torrent is created by one user who becomes the initial Seed. As more users download the torrent, these other users become Peers. Everyone who downloads the torrent is also uploading it at the same time, which allows for massive amounts of bandwidth to be shared among hundreds or even thousands of users simultaneously. Torrents are much more efficient and practical than downloading files directly from a server because they are not susceptible to bandwidth issues or time-out delays and the files they represent are not actually hosted on a particular server but rather on the computers of many different users. That last fact alone is very important due to the illegality of most torrents.
Torrent Host
A torrent host is a website that hosts thousands or even millions of different torrents. As was mentioned above, torrent hosts do not host the actual files that torrents represent, allowing the majority of torrent hosts to continue operating due to legal technicalities. Torrent hosts simply allow users to upload, download, and search for torrents based on keywords, just like any other search engine. Some of the biggest torrent hosts are IsoHunt, PirateBay, and Monova, although IsoHunt and Monova are currently facing legal battles and have had to restrict a large portion of their content.
Torrent Client
A torrent client is a program that allows users to retrieve the content that is found in torrents. The torrent simply tells the torrent client how big the file is, how many files there are, and where to download the file from. The most popular torrent client is BitTorrent, although many duplicates have been made of the program over the years under different names. Torrent clients allow users to simply drag-and-drop torrents into the interface in order to open them, select which files to download, and decide whether to run a hash check. When the file is finished downloading, users can locate the file by right-clicking on the file and selecting "Open Containing Folder". Alternatively, users can go to "Options", "Preferences", and "Directories" in order to set the default location for torrents and downloaded files.
Seeds
A seed is a user who has already downloaded the entire torrent in question. Because seeds are able to upload any part of the file, torrent files download faster when the torrent client can connect to more seeds. Unfortunately, many people remove torrents from their torrent client when the files are finished downloading in order to bypass copyright infringement laws and increase their bandwidth for other torrents.
Peers
A peer is a user who has downloaded part of the torrent in question but is currently still downloading. Because peers are still downloading, they are also uploading at the same time. This makes it good to connect to more peers because the file will download faster. Unfortunately, some users set their upload bandwidth low in order to maximize their download bandwidth and peers are less likely to have a specific piece of a torrent file because they have not finished downloading it themselves.
Hashlink
A hashlink is what identifies a specific torrent. Hashlinks allow users to find specific torrents no matter which torrent host they are located on. Hashlinks give the user the ability to learn more about the torrent such as user comments, seeds and peers, and user ratings. To use a hashlink, a user simply has to copy and paste it into a search engine and review the other sites that are hosting the file.
