23-02-2013, 03:56 PM
Torrent File Sharing
INTRODUCTION:-
In this 21st century, Internet has become an indispensable part in everybody’s life. Everybody uses internet these days and some people without actually knowing what is it and how it works. Internet collaborated with world wide web has revolutionized the way in which data gets exchanged. This world wide web predominantly uses HTTP(Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) to transfer the data.
We all use internet to search for desired information, to use e-mail, watch videos and many more. If we encounter the information or data that we are questing for, then sometimes we DOWNLOAD them to our local machine so that we can access the same in future instead of searching the web each time we need it.
We download different files from web like documents, softwares, images, audio, video etc. with file sizes ranging from KB to GBs. All these data is mounted somewhere in the servers located in different parts of the world.
There are millions of people who use internet to download required information. Now there will be some famous huge sized files(may be docs, images, videos) which are most frequently downloaded by most of the internet users (Ex:- The Titanic Movie).
What if many people want to download the same file parallelly? The servers may not able serve this multiple requests. There is a chance of temporary hanging up of servers.
TORRENT FILE SHARING (BITTORRENT):
BitTorrent is a protocol that enables fast downloading of large files using minimum Internet bandwidth. The protocol is an alternative to the older single source. It is a protocol that underpins the practice of peer-to-peer file sharing and is used for distributing large amounts of data over the Internet. BitTorrent is one of the most common protocols for transferring large files and it has been estimated that, collectively, peer-to-peer networks have accounted for approximately 43% to 70% of all Internet traffic (depending on geographical location) as of February 2009. Most of this peer-to-peer traffic is likely from BitTorrent.
Programmer Bram Cohen designed the protocol in April 2001 and released the first available version on July 2, 2001. Currently, numerous BitTorrent clients are available for a variety of computing platforms including an official one released by BitTorrent, Inc.
HOW BITTORRENT WORKS ?
BitTorrent works on different principle called peer-to-peer file sharing. Peer-to-peer file sharing is different from traditional file downloading. In peer-to-peersharing, you use a software program (rather than your Web browser) to locate computers that have the file you want. Because these are ordinary computers like yours, as opposed to servers, they are called peers.
The process works like this:
1)You run peer-to-peer file-sharing software on your computer and send out a request for the file you want to download.
2)To locate the file, software queries other computers that are connected to the Interent and running the file-sharing software.
3)When the software finds a computer that has the file you want on its hard drive, the download begins.
4)Others using the file-sharing software can obtain files they want from your computer’s hard drive.
5)The file-transfer load is distributed between the computers exchanging files, but file searches and transfers from your computer to others can cause bottlenecks. Some people download files and immediately disconnect without allowing others to obtain files from their system, which is called leeching. This limits the number of computers the software can search for the requested file.
CONCLUSION:-
As necessity is the mother of invention, when there was a need of parallel downloading of large file, the idea of torrent has emerged. Thereafter, it revolutionized the way in which large files are downloaded using minimum bandwidth. Despite of having few unsorted issues, BitTorrent has become ubiquitous and holds a special space in the history of data exchange through internet.