Have you ever needed to download a large file from the internet and seen the option to download the file as a torrent, but had no idea what a torrent was? “Torrents” are part of an internet protocol that allow for peer-to-peer file sharing. This means that instead of downloading a file from a single server, which can often be slow, the file is downloading in pieces from all users connected to the peer network that have the file. This allows a user to download a file with a lot of peers as fast as the user’s bandwidth can handle.
In order to download files using the BitTorrent protocol, the user needs a torrent client that is capable of connecting them to the peer-to-peer network to download the file. One of the most popular clients is uTorrent. uTorrent is a super lightweight, easy to use BitTorrent client. It’s a very small program with next to no system requirements. uTorrent can run on any computer without affecting performance at all. It can run on Windows XP and onwards as well as OS X 10.5 and up. uTorrent is also available for use on Linux, but it must be also run through the command line, though a GUI is in development as well.
uTorrent is totally intuitive to use, so first time users need not be apprehensive. Once the program is installed, the user simply downloads the torrent for the file they want to download. The torrent file itself is is very small, typically under 100 kb. The torrent file is then opened by uTorrent, and the main file is downloaded to the location that the user specifies. As the file is downloaded, uTorrent then “seeds” the file, allowing other users of the peer-to-peer network to be download bits of the file as well. There is an option to limit or turn off seeding if a user chooses, but if only a few people seed the file while many try to download it, speed drops. This means that you should seed files if you don’t have any bandwidth limits.
All in all, uTorrent is a great entry point to using torrents to download files. Utilizing the BitTorrent protocol to download files can save you a lot of time, so be sure to download uTorrent and give it a try!
