P2P v. Torrent

[Darwinian]

I have Limewire, eMule and BearShare. These are all P2P programmes. Now, I've just downloaded Vuze and this apparently is a torrent based piece of software.

Basically I would like to know what the difference between the two are. I know how the P2P programmes work but how does this torrent thing work?

Any takers?

[Tiberius]

Ok, very simply:

P2P programs cover both torrent programs and the standard user-user programs. Limewire, eMule, and Bearshare.

Limewire, eMule, and Bearshare work by connecting people who are using their individual program. For example, if I am using Bearshare and wnat to download a file called "music.mp3", Bearshare would look for other people on their network who have the file, and get them all to send it to you. Bearshare doesn't search through people who are using Limewire or eMule, simply because they are the competition.

Bittorrent is a protocol that was invented to solve this problem, and allow much more sharing to be done. It is a P2P protocol, not a program. The programs that use it are often called "torrenting programs", and they include BitTorrent (program), Azureus Vuze, and others. BitTorrent (program) is lightweight, but Vuze is more powerful.

Bittorrent works by having each file you want to share connected to a torrent file. This torrent file is then downloaded by people who want to standard file, and it allows them to connect to anyone who has the file. For example:

I want the file "music.mp3", so I go to a torrent search engine like http://thepiratebay.org or http://isohunt.com or many many others. I find the file I want, and download the associated torrent file (very small in size). I load the torrent into my torrent program (I use Vuze) and it connects to its main server, finds everyone who is currently sharing that file, and starts downloading pieces of the file from everyone. The key thing here is that because BitTorrent is a protocol, it can be used across multiple platforms and programs. So even if I am using Vuze, I might be getting the file from people using BitTorrent (program) or UTorrent or any other program.

Another great thing about BitTorrent is that it does not just download the file from front to back. In normal P2P this happens and your program has to make sure that the people you are downloading it off have the next section before it downloads it. With BitTorrent, it selects the best piece to download first, which might be a middle piece, or and end piece. This enables the fastest possible download speed. The file is simply put together piece by piece, and not from front to back. It also means you can safely download multiple pieces at the same time from multiple sources, and no corruption can occur.

As I have said, Vuze has many more options than any other client, and one of them is the port you wish to use. If you configure the port, you can vastly speed up your downloads by forwarding it on your router.

A guide on how to do this for specific routers and programs can be found here: http://www.portforward.com

[Darwinian]

Wow. We live and learn!

I'll be playing around with it today to see what I can do.

Thanks

[Tiberius]

Hehe, no problem. I admit it is confusing at first, and needs configuring to get it to work well with your network (port forwarding etc) but you cannot simply do this with normal P2P programs (that I know of).

A user guide is available here: http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/User_Guide

I personally think the new revamp of Vuze is silly, and I much prefer to so called "advanced" view (View -> Advanced -> My Torrents), but then that is what I am used to

[Eilonnwy]

I love bittorrent. I usually search on isohunt and I download with bitcomet. But if I want a single song I'll use limewire because it's sometimes harder to find a single small file on bittorrent. It's much better for larger files.

[Tiberius]

I only use BitTorrent for legal things like free software and Linux distros.

[Eilonnwy]

Shhhhhh!!! So do I....>.>

[Darwinian]

Stuff that

I've got a hard drive full of films and documentories!

[StewartP]

Thank you Eilonnwy for putting me onto Torchwood (just watched episode 1, and now on episode 2) and thanks techies for putting me onto torrent.
It took about 8 hours but I downloaded the whole of series 1

[Eilonnwy]

And Glad you like Torchwood. It's good stuff. Ianto is my favorite character. He's kind of quiet in the beginning but he starts to come into his own later on in the show.