What do y'all know about Torrents?

Shop manuals for my truck are available on a BitTorrent. When I downloaded it, all I got was a .torrent file that Windows doesn't understand.

I googled it and it seems like a torrent is a file sharing network like Kaaza.

I don't want to get in a file sharing network...
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RunnerBiker ¿
"Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip." - Will Rogers

I don't remember much. I did it a few times in the past. You need to have a torrent program and it is a filesharing thing like you want to avoid.

That is why I quit trying it.

I've poked at it in the past, found the newsgroups much better source for stuff. I don't think I ever got it working at all. I had better luck with IRC filesharing than torrant.
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You can't hold a liberal responsible for their words because it's character assassination.

try looking here, if you can find it, I can snag it for ya
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You can't hold a liberal responsible for their words because it's character assassination.

Bittorrent is a basic pier to pier networking client.

For example, when you download a file using the bit torrent client, you can then "seed" the various bittorrent servers with a small file that tells everyone that you are now willing to share that file/document. If you leave the bittorrent client running, others can grab that file from your system.

Likewise, you can grab that small torrent file, open it your bittorrent client and it will look at all the seeders and pick the best/fastest connection for you to use for your download.

Of course, you don't have to seed anything (you can just turn that feature off) and/or you can just shut down the bittorrent client when you finish downloading, or have it shut down when it completes the download. That is how I use bittorrent.

Suppose a company or group has a few files or documents on a server that they would like to share. They can simply seed the torrents and those documents will be available to all torrent users. As with any kind of network sharing, it be used for legal file transfers or illegal file transfersl. FTP and HTTP are no different. Don't be afraid of using all the tools at your disposal because companies like Kaaza decided to engage in illegal activity. BT is nothing like kaaza or napster, as they were specifically geared for illegal file sharing and their own servers made that possible. Bit torrent is a different animal all together.

I love bittottent and I use it download Linux DVD ISOs, podcasts and any other legal files that I might need, just as I do with FTP or HTTP transfers. Many times the HTTP or FTP site will be down or running slow, but I can always grab the file I need from the torrents due to the sheer number of seeders, and faster at times. I'm no longer relying on one website or server to get my data.

That's my 2c, FWIW.
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"Linux is more than an OS, it's a state of mind."

Thanks GW, I guess I'll give it a try a little later. I'll let you know how it goes.
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RunnerBiker ¿
"Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip." - Will Rogers

This is a very interesting article about BitTorrent. How it works, drawbacks, and possible solutions. I was rather fascinated by the whole thing.
link
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Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea. - Robert Heinlein

The ISP's have been trying to kill the torrents for a long time. They claim it sucks their bandwidth. What really sucks are the ISPs themselves!! Many are now limiting the amount of data you can transfer per month, doesn't matter how you transfer it either, torrent, http., ftp..whatever..


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"Linux is more than an OS, it's a state of mind."

BitTorrent Developers Introduce Comcast Busting Encryption

Quote:

Several BitTorrent developers have joined forces to propose a new protocol extension with the ability to bypass the BitTorrent interfering techniques used by Comcast and other ISPs. This new form of encryption will be implemented in BitTorrent clients including uTorrent, so Comcast subscribers are free to share again.

link
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Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea. - Robert Heinlein

Way to fight back!!
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"Linux is more than an OS, it's a state of mind."

Usergroups have been encrypted for a couple of years now....
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You can't hold a liberal responsible for their words because it's character assassination.

You mean the binaries on the newsgroups? Some are, most are not. ISP's heavily filter what groups and content they allow on their usenet servers nowadays. Many of them have the DL speed throttled way back as well.

Usenet was overlooked for a long time. It's been getting more scrutiny of late.
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"Linux is more than an OS, it's a state of mind."

As long as there's "new stuff" like Bit use news group folks will be under the radar. No the storage of the binaries are not encrypted (I don't suppose) but the transfer is now, in some cases.
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You can't hold a liberal responsible for their words because it's character assassination.