What is Torrenting? || Common Terms || How does it Work?

What is Torrenting?

Torrent is a file that contains metadata about the contents that you are about to download. Torrenting is downloading, uploading or just playing around with those files.  

Common terms you come across while Torrenting:
Peer: Peer is a term used for any client who is involved in file sharing in a peer-to-peer network.

Swarms: A collection of clients who are involved in downloading or uploading the same torrent.

Seeders: Seeders are those clients who are downloading and simultaneously uploading a torrent. You always see the number of seeds written along with the torrent file, they represent the no of copies or no of clients who are downloading the same torrent or has already downloaded the same file.

Leechers: The clients who are downloading a torrent file but not uploading it. They configure their uploading speed to 0.

Indexers: Indexers are the websites that show you torrent files to download. eg. extratorrent, limetorrent.

Trackers: Trackers are the servers that help direct packets between peers. They keep track of all the clients who are seeding the file.

Torrent Clients: Torrent Clients are applications that help you in downloading, uploading or creating the torrent files. You put your torrent files in these applications and they collect packets from different swarms and then combine all those packets in sequence to give you a complete file.

How Do Torrents Work?

The first point to note here is Torrent works in a peer-to-peer network. i.e there is no central server from where a file is downloaded. Your file is being downloaded from all the clients in the network who are seeding the file. The second point is it works on a torrent protocol, most commonly used protocol is BitTorrent protocol. Basically, downloading small chunks of the file from all the seeders in the network and then reassembling it at the user end.

The direct downloading system(i.e Client-Server) works by downloading the whole file from a single source i.e Server Computer. Whereas in torrent downloads, files are downloaded from many peers. You get more downloading speed when you are using the Torrent service because everyone is assisting each other whereas only one computer is sending the file to all the users in Direct download system. Network congestion also slows down the speed of direct download(client-server) systems. The network can crash too if the traffic arriving at source exceeds. Whereas in torrent downloads if there are more numbers of peers downloading from a single seeder, the networks automatically redirect that peer to some other seeders.

Visualizing how torrent works with an example:-

Suppose Raj wants to download a software. First, he visits the indexer, downloads the torrent file from there and then opens the file in any torrent client such as uTorrent.

The Torrent client connects to the Tracker server and searches for all those clients who are seeding the file. As soon as software starts downloading, Raj too becomes a seeder because while downloading the file, he is simultaneously uploading it to other clients. The packets are being downloaded from different peers and arranged in sequence by the torrent client. As soon as the download completes, the file starts seeding to help other users in the network.

Is Torrenting illegal?

The most important thing here I want to mention is there is no illegality in the protocol. And many sites also offer Torrent download service along with the Direct download. Torrenting is actually a better means of sharing files in the network. The only thing that makes it illegal is piracy. Many users hack the content and upload it to the network. This causes copyright infringement.

I hope this information helps. Finally, Thank you.