Difference between revisions of "BitTorrent"

Revision as of 21:29, 8 August 2014

Definition

BitTorrent is a file transferring protocol used to distribute large amounts of data. It is peer-to-peer in nature, as users connect to each other directly to send and receive portions of the file. The initial distributor of the complete file or collection acts as the first seed. Each peer who downloads the data also uploads them to other peers. Because of this, BitTorrent is extremely efficient. A minimum of one seed is needed to begin spreading files between thousands of peers.

A BitTorrent client is any program that implements the BitTorrent protocol. Each client is capable of preparing, requesting, and transmitting any type of computer file over a network, using the protocol. A peer is any computer running an instance of a client.

To share a file or group of files, a peer first creates a small file called a "torrent" containing metadata about the files to be shared and about a tracker.

There are central servers called trackers which coordinate the activity of peers. Distributed trackers may be used in combination with Peer exchange and a distributed hash table.

Security

BitTorrent does not offer its users anonymity. It is possible to obtain the IP addresses of all current, and possibly previous, participants in a swarm from the tracker. This may expose users running a BitTorrent client.

There are "cheating" clients like BitThief which claim to be able to download without uploading. Such exploitation negatively affects the cooperative nature of the BitTorrent protocol, although it might prove useful for people in countries where uploading copyrighted material is illegal, but downloading is not.

• Avoid Getting Caught and Comparison of File Sharing Services Explained

Popular BitTorrent Portals

KG Set

• Torrent Portal - good for music, video, and software (shareware, etc).
• #sztv - Mostly television content (like YouTube?) and comics?
• mininova - Largest BitTorrent portal, based in the Netherlands, does not allow pornographic
• The Pirate Bay - Swedish, good for music, video, and software (shareware, etc).
• isoHunt - works with the RIAA and Microsoft to remove copyright listings.
• torrent spy - Now Defunct

Test Set

• SuprNova - Swedish (formerly Slovenian) good for music, video, and software (shareware, etc). Frequently offline. New owners also operate "The Pirate Bay"
• Demonoid - Membership is required to download torrent files older than a few days.
• btjunkie - looks promising
• myBittorrent - crawler, uses Google API to find BitTorrent websites on the internet.
• Seedpeer - illegal, bad content?

Public Domain Misc

• MVGroup - Educational video. (registration required)

Popular BitTorrent Clients

One has to be careful when selecting and installing a bittorrent client. The trend is towards spyware, or installers with PUP addons. Many once trustworthy streamlined lightweight bittorrent clients, such as uTorrent, have become bloatware with PUP addons in the installer.

For Microsoft Windows

• uTorrent - A popular bittorrent client that once was very lightweight, however, has declined in quality and the most recent installer tested contained PUP addon software.
• Tixati - Free, lightweight, and no spyware, addware, or PUP addons. Recommended.
• qBittorrent - cross platform, Low and stable RAM and CPU.

For Linux

• qBittorrent - cross platform, Low and stable RAM and CPU. A great alternative to Deluge.

For Macintosh

• qBittorrent - cross platform, Low and stable RAM and CPU.

Android

• uTorrent - Android version
• aTorrent - Free

External Links and References

• 6 Lesser Known BitTorrent Clients That You May Not Know About for Windows

Other Online Resources

• Ten Most Used BitTorrent Sites Compared
• TorrentFreak Torrent News Site