What is a torrent file?

This is old news, I know. Yet a lot of people still ask me what a torrent is. You could find out simply by googling, but I thought I'd try to simplify the actual process as much as possible.

When dealing with torrents there are three parts to using it. The program you use to open torrent files, the actual torrent itself, and the site where you get your torrents. I'm splitting this post up into sections to explain what each part actually does. Let's first start off with why torrents were created.

Why were torrents created?

Say a website creates a program, and they want to allow users who visit their site to download that program. Well this particular program gets really popular and there are now thousands of users getting it at once. If the website has a maximum download rate of 1mb a second, and there are a thousand users getting that file at the same time, the download speed is split between all those users. So each individuals download speed is really really slow.

Well someone thought of a solution. What if there was a program that allowed the downloaders to use their upload stream to share the parts they had already downloaded. Then once they were done, they could continue to share the file increasing the speed at which others would receive their download. So instead of everyone getting it from one place, there is now thousands of places to get bits and pieces of that download.

In this picture it shows how normal downloading works. A central server sending out information to each individual computer requesting the file.



In this picture, it simply explains how torrents work. Once a user has started downloading from the server, they can send that data to other users requesting the file, thus relieving the server of a lot of stress from downloads.
















The actual torrent file itself does not contain very much information. It is not the actual program, or video, or anything other than some information. Torrent files actually come from individuals who want to share their content, or companies looking for an alternative way to share downloads. You can verify a torrent file by the actual extension itself saying .torrent instead of the usual three letter extension most files have. It will also only open with a bittorrent client.

What is a BitTorrent client?

In simple terms it's a program that allows you to use a torrent file. What it exactly does is a lot more complicated. For this example I'm going to use uTorrent, which is a very small and very good bittorrent client. Once you open up a torrent file the program will start searching for peers. Peers are other users who are also using the same torrent as you, but not necessarily the same client. What a torrent does is tells the program to connect you to anyone else sharing the file you want. It gets the file in pieces from various peers depending on how many actual users have that file.

It used to be that if someone had a torrent that contained a bundle of various files, like a season of a show, then you'd have to get the entire season even if you wanted just one episode. With clients like uTorrent you can select exactly which files you want, and exclude others. If you have any concerns about privacy of files being downloaded, this is one of the few that has encryption. Here is a wiki page displaying all the features of various torrent clients. You can see why I like uTorrent. Ususlly torrent clients need a certain port to be opened if you are behind a router, and hopefully you are behind one. If you have troubles figuring out how to do so, here's a site to get started -> Portforward.com


Where do I get torrent files from?

There are literally thousands of sites specified to host torrent files. The most famous of course is ThePirateBay. Known for not backing down when threatened by numerous corporations. They are not located in the US, so copyright laws don't apply to them. I like the site, but it's not always reliable with certain files and the majority of comments is complaints. The site that I would recommend for beginning is isoHunt.com. They recently implemented a comment and rating system for torrents. This is for the most part to notify other users if the torrent is valid and not a fake. There is also a rating system for torrent files as well.

Now if this is your first time being at a torrent hosting site, you might be confused with all the information provided. First thing you should do is type in something in the search field, for an example use the word book. What comes in might be different than what you'll see in the pic below, but most of it should look the same.

Click to enlarge me!

Click to enlarge me!

1. Is the Category, which displays what the file is, book, movie, music, tv show and so on.

2.The age of the torrent, how long has it been put up, h= hours, d= days, w= weeks.

3.This is the name of the torrent. This can either be really simple or pretty complex. Take a look at the first one. It says National Treasure 2 book of secrets, which is the name of the movie. [2007] is the year of when the movie premiered. DvDrip means it's a rip from an actual DVD disc. [Eng] means that it's in English. Finally aXXo is the name of the group that ripped and put it up to share. This is usually the format for movies. Other formats look different, but for the most part you should be able to decrypt it.

4. The size of the actual file you are getting. This is usually in MB (megabytes) or GB (gigabytes)

5. The letter S is for seeders. This is the number of users currently just sharing the file. They already completed the download, but are still sharing it. This is how torrents work, by people sharing the files even after it's completed. It's proper torrent etiquette to upload as much as you download, called a 1:1 ratio.

6. The letter L stands for leechers. This shows the amount of people getting the file at that time. It's best to have more seeders than leechers. The more seeders the better, and if the leecher count is way more than seeders, you're better off waiting a bit until they even out.

7. This is the rating system. Each star means someone liked that torrent and basically recommends it. If this is in red and has a minus it means stay away from this torrent.

8. The speech bubble with the number means the amount of comments this torrent file has. Clicking on the number takes you to the comments so you can read them. Most comments verify the quality of the file. Some comments might be about troubles users have encountered, or opinions they might have.

Now that you know what those statistics are for, clicking the actual torrent name drops down a box with even more information. Most of it not really necessary, like trackers and the actual files contained within the torrent. Just click the download torrent link and you'll be prompted with what to do with that file. If you already have uTorrent installed, the first option should be to "Open with uTorrent". This will then launch the program and you'll be asked to save the file. After that is done wait for the download to complete and you'll be able to use the file. Just remember to remove the torrent from uTorrent before moving it from wherever it is you saved the file to, otherwise you'll get a torrent error since the program won't be able to find that file to share anymore.

So what you have just read should be more than enough to get you started on using torrents, which is a great way to replace using such unsafe programs as Limewire. I do however recommend that you have an anti-virus program installed and up to date before using torrents. That will be my next blog so stay tuned if you want suggestions for which anti-virus program you should be using.