Image by jacobian
Heard of BitTorrent, but not quite sure how to use it, or wonder whether you should use it at all? Here’s a quick guide for newbies on how it works and how to get started downloading torrent files.
What is BitTorrent?
BitTorrent is an internet peer-to-peer file sharing protocol that works in a sort of decentralized fashion. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that as you download portions of your files from the the person who originally shared the file, you are also getting portions from fellow downloaders to maximize data exchange.
BitTorrent is one of the most commonly used protocols for transferring very large files because it doesn’t overload web servers that provide downloads—since everybody is both sending and receiving, it’s much more efficient than everybody downloading from a single server.
How BitTorrent Works
To better understand how this all works, take a look at this diagram from Wikipedia detailing the process:
“In this animation, the colored bars beneath all of the 7 clients in the upper region above represent the file, with each color representing a individual piece of the file. After the initial pieces transfer from the seed (large system at the bottom), the pieces are individually transferred from client to client. The original seeder only needs to send out one copy of the file for all the clients to receive a copy. To stop animation, click browser’s Stop or hit ESC key.”
Indexers
An “indexer” is a site that compiles a list of torrents and descriptions and is a place where users form a community (with rules!) around BitTorrent content. When you want to share, download, or request files, the indexer’s community is where you go. These usually take the form of a forum and/or an IRC channel.
Trackers
A “tracker” is a server that assists in directing peers, initiated downloads, and maintaining statistics. Since most indexers have their own private tracker, most people just refer to them both as trackers. In this article, we’re going to use this more general definition to avoid confusion with whatever you may find yourself on the internet.
Trackers route little pieces of data, or packets, to downloaders and assist them in connecting to their fellow peers—as you download chunks of files, you also upload them to other people who have different chunks of the file, and because everybody’s sharing with each other while downloading, it tends to zip along quickly.
How To Host Torrent Privately On Iphone
Seeders and Leechers
Once you’re done downloading, you become a “seeder” and you continue to upload to other peers. If you disable uploading and you only download, you’re referred to as a “leecher,” and aside from its ethical misgivings it can lead to being banned from the tracker. As such, it’s generally good practice to seed at least as much as you download.
Image by nrkbeta
Public vs Private Trackers
Another aspect of trackers are whether they are public or private—the “Private” trackers are based on membership, so only registered users can download, upload, and/or have access to perks like additional downloads. “Public” trackers usually don’t require registration, or if they do, it’s free and always open. In general, the best experience comes from a private tracker with a strong community, so be sure to look around and see if you can’t find one that suits your tastes.
BitTorrent Clients
The other side of the BitTorrent equation can be found on your local computer: a client. The client’s job is to manage your torrents, actually connect to other peers, manage statistics on your end, and, of course, download and upload. While the tracker gives instructions on what to do and how to connect, it’s the client that actually does the heavy-lifting. Because of this, it’s important that you choose a client you trust as well as a client that performs amiably.
There’s no lack of free, feature-packed BitTorrent clients, but we strongly recommend uTorrent (for Windows) and Transmission (for Mac OS and Linux). uTorrent is a powerhouse of an app, and easily one of the lightest to run on Windows. Transmission is installed by default on Ubuntu and many other Linux distributions, and the Mac version runs extremely well and has Growl support. They are both novice and resource-friendly but don’t skip out on some of the more useful options for advanced users.
Note: uTorrent, by default, enables an Ask.com toolbar during installation and offers to make your default search Ask.com. This can be turned off without any problems, but it bears mentioning.
Legality of BitTorrent
BitTorrent itself is a protocol, so it falls to individual trackers as to what’s legal and what’s not. If a copyright violation occurs, it is the tracker that is primarily held responsible, and subsequently its users. You probably should avoid blindly downloading copyrighted works on public trackers, since your IP address can be easily tracked. Call of warhammer end times.
There are many legal uses for BitTorrent, however—for instance, most community-driven Linux distributions offer torrents for their ISOs. Phish fans often record live shows (so long as they comply with Phish’s policy on music trading) and share them online, as do many artists themselves.
There are plenty of legal trackers out there, as well as torrent aggregators that compile links to legal downloads hosted on other trackers. Here’s a couple of examples:
We here at How-To Geek do not condone piracy and we urge you to please download responsibly.
Downloading Torrents
Things are shared through “torrents,” small files containing text that act as instructions for the tracker. In order to download files, you hop on your tracker’s website and download the torrent file, which is usually under 30 KB. You then open that torrent in your chosen BitTorrent and you’ve started to download! The process is that simple, although there is a lot you can do to make the most of your connection if you play around with your client.
Step by Step
First and foremost, download and install your chosen BitTorrent client. Here, I’m using uTorrent as my chosen client on Windows. If you’re using Mac or Linux, it won’t be too hard to follow along using Transmission.
Next, we need a torrent file. I’ve got a torrent of Countdown’s album “Break Rise Blowing” from Jamendo.
Once you have your torrent file in an easy-to-reach (or well-organized) location, all you have to do is double-click on the .torrent file to load it in your client.
You’ll see uTorrent pop up and you’ll get a dialog with option for the specific download.
Here, you can choose where the torrent will download to, whether or not you want to add it to the top of your queue of torrents, and you can even unmark individual files from being downloaded. Once you’ve settled on what you’d like, you can go ahead and click on OK.
In the main uTorrent window you’ll see your queue. From here you can manage your torrents:
Getting started is just that easy. The world of BitTorrent is vast, but hopefully this introduction will give you the incentive to take the plunge. Happy torrenting!
READ NEXT
I use Apache on my machine to share some files over office network.
How can I host them over torrent instead of sending them over http?
LazerLazer
6,6063636 gold badges100100 silver badges131131 bronze badges
1 Answer
There is no such thing as a torrent server - you can create a torrent using your torrent client, add a tracker to improve reliability and then share it. You could probably use the apache server as a webseed - but you're trying not to use the web server, right?
In this specific case though, the speeds you get over the office network are likely to be faster than using torrents - you MIGHT be able to use a local tracker, and have it serve out local IP addresses, but its still not going to be very efficient. torrents are designed for anonymous, high reliability sharing at decent speeds - regular file sharing over lan might end up being faster.
I'd suggest looking at webdav or rsync instead.
If you want it really fast. nothing beats good ol sneakernet
Journeyman Geek♦Journeyman Geek
114k4444 gold badges223223 silver badges379379 bronze badges
Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged apache-http-serverbittorrenthttp or ask your own question.
We can see the growth of systems using peer to peer principles.But there is an area where peer to peer is not (yet) widely used: web hosting.
Several projects are already launched, but there is no big solution which would permit users to use and to contribute to a peer to peer webhosting.
How To Host Torrent Privately Sites
I don't mean not-open projects (like Google Web Hosting, which use Google ressources, not users'), but open projects, where each user contribute to the hosting of the global web hosting by letting its ressources (cpu, bandwith) be available.
I can think of several assets of such systems:
So, why such a system is not yet widely used ?
EDIT:I think that the '97.2%, plz seed!!' problem occurs because all users do not seed all the files. But if a system where all users equally contribute to all the content is built, this problem does not occur anymore. Peer to peer storage systems (like Wuala) are reliable, thanks to that.
The problem of proprietary code is pertinent, as well of the fact that an user might not know which content (possibly 'bad') he is hosting.Thanks for your answers.
I add another problem: the latency wich may be higher than with a dedicated server.
EDIT 2:The confidentiality of code and data can be achieved by encryption. For example, with Wuala, all files are encrypted, and i think there is no known security breach in this system (but i might be wrong).
It's true that seeders would not have many benefits, or few.But it would prevent people from beeing dependent of web hosting companies.And such a decentralized way to host websites is closer of the original idea of the internet, i think.
OutOfBound
OutOfBoundOutOfBound
58011 gold badge1616 silver badges2424 bronze badges
closed as off topic by Bo Persson, Mac, Shoe, Mario Sannum, Explosion PillsDec 7 '12 at 0:13
Questions on Stack Overflow are expected to relate to programming within the scope defined by the community. Consider editing the question or leaving comments for improvement if you believe the question can be reworded to fit within the scope. Read more about reopening questions here. If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.
6 Answers
This is what Freenet basically is,
Freenet is free software which lets you publish and obtain information on the Internet without fear of censorship. To achieve this freedom, the network is entirely decentralized and publishers and consumers of information are anonymous. Without anonymity there can never be true freedom of speech, and without decentralization the network will be vulnerable to attack.
[..]
Users contribute to the network by giving bandwidth and a portion of their hard drive (called the 'data store') for storing files. Unlike other peer-to-peer file sharing networks, Freenet does not let the user control what is stored in the data store. Instead, files are kept or deleted depending on how popular they are, with the least popular being discarded to make way for newer or more popular content. Files in the data store are encrypted to reduce the likelihood of prosecution by persons wishing to censor Freenet content.
The biggest problem is that it's slow. Both in transfer speed and (mainly) latency. Even if you can get lots of people with decent upload throughput, it'll still never be as quick a dedicated servers or two. The speed is fine for what Freenet is (publishing data without fear of censorship), but not for hosting your website.
A bigger problem is the content has to be static files, which rules out it's use for a majority of high-traffic websites. To serve dynamic data each peer would have to execute code (scary), and would probably have to retrieve data from a database (which would be another big delay, again because of the latency)
I think 'cloud computing' is about as close to P2P web-hosting as we'll see for the time being.
dbrdbr
123k5757 gold badges256256 silver badges319319 bronze badges
For our business I can think of 2 reasons not to use peer hosting:
25.4k1111 gold badges8686 silver badges139139 bronze badges
If I were to donate some of my PCs CPU and bandwidth to some p2p web hosting service, how could I be sure that it wouldn't end up being used to serve child porn or other similarly disgusting content?
Luke WoodwardLuke Woodward
46.8k1212 gold badges6767 silver badges8888 bronze badges
P2P website hosting is not yet widely used, because the companion technology allowing higher upstream rates for individual clients is not yet widely used, and this is something I want to look into*.
What is needed for this is called Wireless Mesh Networking, which should allow the average user to utilise the full upstream speed that their router is capable of, rather than just whatever some profiteering ISP rations out to them, while they relay information between other routers so that it eventually reaches its target.
In order to host a website P2P, a sort of combination of technology is required between wireless mesh communication, multiple-redundancy RAID storage, torrent sharing, and some kind of encryption key hierarchy that allows various users different abilities to change the data that is being transmitted, allowing something dynamic such as a forum to be hosted. The system would have to be self-updating to incorporate the latter, probably by time-stamping all distributed data packets.
There may be other possible catalysts that would cause the widespread use of p2p hosting, but I think anything that returns the physical architecture of hardware actually wiring up the internet back to its original theory of web communication is a good candidate.
Of course as always, the main reason this has not been implemented yet is because there is little or no money in it. The idea will be picked up much faster if either:
*see p2pint dot darkbb dot com if you're interested in developing this concept
4ndy4ndy
How many times have you seen '97.2%, please seed!!' for any random torrent?
Just imagine the havoc if even a small portion of the web became unavailable in this way.
197k4747 gold badges303303 silver badges362362 bronze badges
eleven81eleven81
4,10799 gold badges3232 silver badges4545 bronze badges
It sounds like this idea would add a lot of cost to the individual seeder (bandwidth) without a lot of benefit.
matt bmatt b
112k5858 gold badges256256 silver badges322322 bronze badges
Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged hostingp2p or ask your own question.
The top torrent sites currently include old favorites like The Pirate Bay, as well as very popular torrent sites like RARBG, 1337X, Torlock, YTS.ag, TorrentDownloads, and LimeTorrents.
That said, we know that the best torrent site is always the one that has the high-quality torrent you're after, and with the most seeders, so a large and thorough list of torrent sites, like those in the list below the torrents that are the best of the best, is always a welcome resource to find.
We don't condone illegal sharing of copyrighted files. Please see our full disclaimer and warning for new torrent users at the bottom of the page.
Tips for New Torrent Users
If you're new to torrents, we have two resources that will help you get started in torrenting.
Also, be sure you're running fully updated anti-malware software before you visit any of these sites, and try one of the Best VPN Service Providers that can help keep your torrent activity, and other browsing, private and secure. Also, if you're new to torrents, don't forget that you'll need a torrent client to get these files.
All torrent sites below are working unless otherwise noted, at least as of the last update to this page. Let us know ([email protected]) if we need to adjust a listing.
The Top Torrent Sites
These seven sites made the top of the list. They're not the only torrent sites out there, but they are among the best.
The Pirate Bay: What It Is and How to Use It
This torrent site is a classic, and one of the most popular on the web. TPB has been around in one incarnation or another for a long time and the torrents here are, and have always been, trusted.
Icons on each download help users quickly see if a seeder is trusted or a VIP which helps to ensure safe downloads.
TPB occasionally moves around. If you're still experiencing issues reaching TPB, try these listings on the ProxyBay. It's possible you'll find another way into the site.
This torrent site is for movie enthusiasts. It's full of quality, high-resolution video torrents.
Top 10 lists help users find the most popular movies on the site, and a detail page for the download includes a variety of information from the size of the file and the date it was added to actor information, and the number of seeders and leechers for the download.
At RARBG, it’s about quality, not quantity.
If you're after older or more obscure torrents, 1337X might be for you. Their torrent database isn't nearly as large as some others, but it might have just what you're after. The front page is regularly updated with current and popular information about torrents, torrenting, and categories of interest.
The level of advertising you’ll encounter on this site is frustrating. Links often require two clicks..one to bring up an ad (in a separate window) and one to actually access the information you want. However, once you get passed the advertising, the search result pages contain lots of useful information.
This is the 'no fake torrent' site you've been waiting for. The site actually pays its users $1 per fake torrent they find, and claims to have more than 5 million verified torrents.
You’ll find current and popular files to download in movies, anime, software, games, and music, as well as other categories, and a Top 100 list lets you know what’s most popular with the most seeders and peers.
Focusing exclusively on movies, YTS.am (or YTS.ag) has an easy-to-use layout and a wide variety of titles both old and new. The torrents themselves are known to be easy on bandwidth, which will make those with data caps happy.
YTS.am is the unofficial successor to the now-defunct YTS/YIFY group, which closed its virtual doors in 2015. The current site has a massive user base, too, which helps the bittorrent protocol work more efficiently.
We love the super straightforward torrent detail page at TorrentDownloads. That would be reason enough to give this one a try but the big database and high quality of torrents make it a great choice.
Users can find current torrents in a variety of categories. The ability to rate files and leave comments on files helps to reduce the number of fake files found on the site. An Advanced Search option also allows users to narrow the field of possible returns by category, provider, and status.
You don't want to miss this site in your torrent search. Users report the size of their database is impressive and the frequency of legitimate torrents is enough to keep them coming back.
It’s easy to quickly determine whether a torrent is worth downloading. Internal lists show the date added, size, seeder and leechers, as well as a health meter for each file. The information page for each download also provides additional information about the file.
Other Torrent Search Sites
There are way more than just seven torrent sites out there, of course. We’ve compiled the following list, just in case you want to explore beyond the ones above.
The advertisements on many of these sites are often of the NSFW variety. You should use caution when accessing these sites from public computers or with children present.
Disclaimer & Torrent Legal Warning
Lifewire does not condone illegal sharing of copyrighted material. While P2P file sharing technology itself is completely legal, many of the files traded through P2P are indeed copyrighted. Uploading these copyrighted files puts you at risk of a civil lawsuit in the USA, Canada, Australia, and the UK, at a minimum.
Lawsuits can be targeted at individual users or groups of users. These P2P civil lawsuits are very real and, whether or not they are successful, they are often an extreme financial and emotional burden on the defendants.
Additionally, your Internet Service Provider may choose to release a history of your download and upload activity to potential copyright plaintiffs. In general, the more data you download and upload, the more risk you have of being sued by copyright protection groups.
These are dark days for BitTorrent. Using it leaves you open to fake torrents, viruses, an ISP that throttles your connection, and media companies that snoop to see what you're downloading. If you want to avoid all that, you can create an uber-private BitTorrent community that only you and your friends can access. Here's how.
You're open to these problems because most BitTorrent trackers allow anyone to come in and share files (a BitTorrent tracker, for those that don't remember, is the server that connects you with other BitTorrent users in order to download files). Those other people could include virus spreaders, snoopers, and other untrustworthy folk. While joining a private tracker can help, many users feel they aren't private enough—after all, if you can get an invite, can't anyone?
Advertisement
What's a Private BitTorrent Tracker, and Why Should I Use One?
Dear Lifehacker,I've heard people murmur about 'private' BitTorrent trackers and…
Read more Read
What You'll Get: A Tracker Only Your Friends Can Join
You can do a lot of things to protect yourself, but why go through all that trouble? Between you and your best friends, you probably have a pretty solid collection of media and other files you could share without the need for other, less secure parties. We've shown you how to share your own files using BitTorrent, but if you want a bit more privacy, you can create your own BitTorrent tracker right on your home computer.
Advertisement
How Do I Torrent Safely Now That Demonoid Is Down?
Dear Lifehacker, My favorite private BitTorrent tracker, Demonoid, has apparently gone down for…
Read more Read
When you're done with this process, you'll have a (admittedly primitive) BitTorrent tracker running on your PC, sharing your files through torrents you create. Send those torrents to your friends, and they can download the files directly from you, without any other parties snooping. If your friends share their files too, you can pool your torrents together in a shared Dropbox folder (or something similar) and have a pretty sizable library of stuff to download, without the need for other unsafe channels.
Advertisement
Step One: Set Up Your Torrent Client
To get everything up and running, you'll need a torrent client that supports embedded trackers. We're going to use uTorrent for Windows as an example, but you can perform the same process with Vuze for OS X or qBitTorrent for Linux. Sadly, Transmission does not support embedded trackers, nor does uTorrent for OS X. Here's what you need to do:
Advertisement
Head to uTorrent's preferences and click on Advanced. Scroll down to
bt.enable_tracker and double-click on it to set it to 'True.'
Advertisement
Go to Advanced > WebUI in the preferences. If you aren't using the web UI to monitor torrents from afar, make sure 'Alternative Listening Port' is unchecked (even if 'Enable Web UI' is unchecked, the 'Alternative Listening Port' box must be unchecked or you'll encounter problems). If you are using the web UI, you'll want to make note of the 'Alternative Listening Port' instead of the port you found in step 3.
Advertisement
Again, if you're using OS X or Linux, you'll have to do the same thing, but with your torrent client of choice. For more information on setting up an embedded tracker in Vuze, check out this wiki entry. qBitTorrent users, check out this how-to to set up your embedded tracker.
Advertisement
Step Two: Set Up DynDNS for Easier Connections
Advertisement
Now your computer is set up to act as a private BitTorrent client. However, there's one catch: in order for your friends to connect to you, you'll need to add your IP address to every torrent you create, and most IP addresses change over time—which means your friends could get disconnected from your torrents. To solve this problem, we recommend setting up a service like DynDNS or No IP. We won't go into too much detail about this process here, since we've shown you how to do it before. Once you've set it up, just write down your friendly domain name so you don't forget it—you'll need it in the next step.
Know Your Network, Lesson 4: Access Your Home Computers from Anywhere
You've picked out your hardware and set up the basics, and configured your network to perform…
Read more Read
Advertisement
Step Three: Create Your Torrents and Share Them
The last step is to actually gather the files you want to share, create torrents for them, and give those torrents to your friends. The process is very simple:
Advertisement
Where
51413 is the port number you found when you created your tracker in step one. Also, replace my.dynamic-dns-hostname.com with the friendly domain name you created in step two.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Repeat this process for each file or group of files you want to share (and have your friends do the same). This can take awhile initially if you're sharing a large collection. You can share the torrent files however you want, but the simplest way is to create a shared Dropbox folder for you and your friends, where everyone dumps the torrents of the files they're sharing. That way, you have your own mini search engine for finding exactly what you're looking for on your private tracker. Make sure you leave your computer and torrent client on when you're seeding, or your friends won't be able to download your files.
Don't forget to enable encryption so your ISP doesn't throttle you, either—whether you're using a private tracker or not, those same rules still apply. If you want, you can also use a proxy or VPN to anonymize your traffic, but it isn't really necessary as long as you trust your friends, since only they can see what you're downloading.
Advertisement
What Does My Internet Provider See When I'm Downloading Torrents?
Dear Lifehacker,I've done lots of research about my Internet Service Provider's…
Read more Read
The Downsides to This Method
Like other BitTorrent privacy methods, this isn't perfect. This doesn't actually give you fine-grained control over who joins the tracker, so if one of your friends hands a torrent off to someone else, they'll be in on the tracker too without your consent (so make sure you trust your friends). In addition, anyone can seed on your tracker if they know your IP address or dynamic DNS hostname, but that's unlikely—and even if they did know it, all they'd be able to do is seed their own torrents and take up resources on your computer; they wouldn't be able to see what you're downloading.
Advertisement
Download speeds will also be slower, since you'll usually only be downloading the torrent from one person instead of many—that means your download speed is pretty much limited to your friend's upload speed. However, the extra privacy may be worth the slower speeds to you. After all, this doesn't have to be your only method of using BitTorrent—you can still download other torrents from public and private trackers as normal. This is just a simple way to take advantage of your network of friends, and share files with each other more privately than you can elsewhere.
This post is part of our Evil Week series at Lifehacker, where we look at the dark side of getting things done. Knowing evil means knowing how to beat it, so you can use your sinister powers for good. Want more? Check out our evil week tag page.
Advertisement
Title image remixed from Tancha (Shutterstock), Leremy (Shutterstock), and Emanuele Bertoldi.
Comments are closed.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |