What is torrent?

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» What is torrent?

[Last update on 17/02/2010, Wed]

What is torrent?

Torrent is a small file (around few kilobytes) with the suffix .torrent, which contains all the information needed to download a file the torrent was made for. That means it contains file names, their sizes, where to download from and so on. You can get torrents for almost anything on lots of web sites and torrent search engines.

What is torrenting?

Torrenting is a highly popular peer-to-peer file-sharing activity that allows participants to send and receive files from other computers. It is especially useful downloading large files, including movies and games.

Is torrent/torrenting illegal?

Torrents themselves and all around them is nothing illegal, until you download materials you shouldn't. Torrents are also used for fully legal distribution of certain data ( for example demo versions, trials and so on).

Although it's often used for purposes that may border on copyright infringement, such as the sharing of music, it has widespread legitimate use in many programs and systems in the world.

Torrent V.S traditional direct downloads(not comparing with download accelerator or premium account for online storage like Megaupload,Rapidshare,Hotfile etc)

Pros

-More people download the file, the higher download speed for everyone.

-We can choose the files we want to download from the torrent unless the whole folder is zip.

-Torrent allows us to pause and resume anytime we like especially downloading very big files. We can even shut down our computer when we “pause” it.

-No download restrictions(timer, slow download speed etc) like Megaupload,Rapidshare,Hotfile etc

Multiple download files at 1 go

Cons

-Download speed depends on how many “seeds”

-Might face copyrighted issue as most people download illegal things.

-Might get malware infection as we are downloading from someone we don’t know.

-Computer internet speed might “lag” due to high download speed for torrents.

You may want to read on:

http://ezysolutions.blogspot.com/2010/01/torrent-recommended-setting.html

References:

http://www.ehow.com/about_5046260_torrent.html

http://www.what-is-torrent.com/

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