Eli5 What does seeding a torrent mean?
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Seeding means that you are hosting the torrent for others to download
A torrent is a peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing mechanism where people host files on their own computer and other people who need those files connect to the host computer to download them
The computers downloading the files are called leechers, while those hosting are called seeders. Often while downloading the files, you are also uploading the content that has been downloaded to other leechers
Torrents work by pulling parts of a file from one of the available sources, or “seeds”, X bytes at a time. The availabilty of those seeds may change while you’re downloading the file, but it doesn’t matter so long as there is at least one seed at all times. This is because a seed is a computer that already has a copy of the file downloaded and is offering to share that file with other computers on the network trying to download their own copy. The torrent downloader essentially just connects computers that want files (leechers) with other computers that already have them (seeds).
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