Isn’t a torrent just, like…directly sharing a file from your PC? What’s all this business about “seeding” and “leeching”?
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Seeders have the whole file and you can download any chunks of it from them. Leechers and in the process of downloading the file from seeders, although they do have some complete chunks and you can download certain chunks from them.
It is basically like directly sharing, but not quite. A file (it can be anything) is separated into many smaller pieces, each getting a special name. The torrent basically holds this information and the instructions on how to assemble the smaller pieces into one piece, the original file.
This instruction (a torrent) is coupled with additional information which keeps track of various computers across the internet which have the same torrent and which pieces of the original file they have. This additional information is called Trackers.
When you download a specific torrent and run it using software made to read it, the software knows what smaller pieces of the larger file you lack (when you begin you lack all of them) and it checks which computers have those smaller pieces. Then it downloads the smaller pieces from any available computer which has them. Once it has all the pieces, they are assembled into the original file.
Seeders is the name for the computers which the entire file and thus all the smaller pieces.
Leechers is the name for the computers which do not have the entire file, but rather any amount of the smaller pieces.
The benefit of the system is that you can download any piece from any computer which has it, be they seeders or leechers, as long as those computers are currently running the torrent software and are connected to the internet.
So, in short, torrents help by distributing a file to as many people as possible and allow anyone to download that file by taking pieces from everyone until they have the whole thing. This way nobody is dependant on one place that holds the file. If someone disconnects or deletes the file it is still available to download from the other people who have it. Of course, if everyone who has the complete file were to delete it, nobody would be able to get the full file anymore.
Direct download : imagine a person have a book in Spain and you in England need that book. The Spaniard give you a link to his book, and you download it sheet by sheet to your own computer
Torrent : imagine you in England need a book, and there are people in Spain, German, USA, Iraq, China, have the book you want. They seed the book and let you leech it. Sheet by sheet. Even if the Spaniard died, you still have other sources. Even an Argentinian who only have half the book can seed it for you, as long as you didn’t have the sheet he have. In the process of leeching from all over the world. You open an access to other people to leech part of the book you already own. Maybe someone from Nigeria need it too
Moral of the story …. Please seed
Let’s say you’re connected to 10 people who have the complete file. If you have the bandwidth, you can download portions of the file from all of them at the same time. That way, if they all have limited upload rates, you can download it 10x faster than if you were downloading from just one of them.
They’re seeding the file to you. You’re leeching the file from them. You can also seed the already downloaded portions to someone else, one of your peers.
seeders are people who have a copy of the file and are sharing it, leechers are people who dont have a copy of the file and thus arent sharing it.
if a leecher downloads the whole file and sticks around, rather then leaving and turning off their torrent client, they become another seeder helping to share the file.
now imagine you got some [banger wallpapers](https://www.reddit.com/r/EarthPorn/comments/10bfgch/deep_in_the_green_kings_woods_bedfordshire_oc/) and each of your 5 friends wants a copy of your collection, but you got really slow internet and it’ll take ages to send a complete copy to each of them.
so you send 20% of your collection to each friend, and then they share their copy with each other, and with the 5 of them combined they get the whole thing.
thats basically how torrents work in groups of users.
much easier for the uploader, only needing to send 1 copy worth of data.
much quicker for the downloader, being able to get the file from multiple places at once.
additionally they can also pause and resume ***really really well***, so you can just turn off the computer and go to bed in the middle of things, and as long as the file is still available later you can continue like nothing happened.
10 people all have the same jigsaw. An 11th wants to create a copy. So the 11th person asks the other 10 to provide whatever pieces they can so they can copy them. It’s just a distributed way of assembling something rather than making a 1:1 clone of something.
Seeding is just the act of making your copy available for others to copy from. Leeching is where you throttle/block other people from copying yours while taking copies from everyone else. You’re leeching off others and not reciprocating.
Oh sweet a torrent file with a list of a bunch of other computers that have what I’m looking for.
Hey, file-holders, I’d like the file. Hey, while you’re at it, I can share whatever part of it I have with whoever is looking for it.
I know I don’t have the whole file yet and I’m just downloading it, so I’m leeching off the goodwill of others. But once I have the whole thing, I’ll seed it to whomever picks up that torrent file
Torrents can be fast on residential asymetrical ISP lines because even though people’s upload speeds are 1:50th your download speed, you can request from 50 different people.
Imagine you live on a street. At the end of the street, is a guy in a red house. He has a 15 page document, detailing information and rules about an upcoming block party. You want this document, as does everyone on the street. But, the problem is that the guy in the red house can only give out a copy of one page at a time, to anyone who comes knocking on his door.
So, you knock on the door. You receive a copy of page 1. You go back home, and drop it on your desk. You then go back to the red house, to request page 2. But, your neighbor is there as well, and he was there before you. So you have to wait a few seconds for him to receive his copy op page 1, before you can request the copy of page 2.
This continues on, and after a while you have 10 pages already. But now, almost everyone in the street is lining up to receive a copy of a page. And the line to wait for the guy in the red house to copy a page is getting long. You now have to wait a solid 15 minutes to request a copy.
Then your neighbor realizes you have page 1 through 10 already. He only has page 1 through 6, and is currently in line to request page 7. He quickly texts his wife, and tells her to ask your wife for a copy of your page 8. It’s not a problem, you have that page anyway, and copying isn’t that much of an issue.
He then realizes the neighbor across the street has pages 12 through 15. So he also sends his son out to get a copy of page 12 from them. You realize his plan, and quickly send out your own kid to grab a copy of page 12 from there as well. And then your other kid to grab a copy of page 14 from the guy down the street with the blue house. Other people in line start doing what you are doing, and start sending out family members to grab copies from other people in the street.
Quickly, the street is abuzz with people running to other houses, grabbing copies of pages that they need, but their neighbor already has. People are still coming to the line at the red house to request certain pages, but it’s a lot less people. Why would they? They can grab copies at other houses as well.
Soon, the guy standing in line in front of you steps out of the line. He only needed a copy of page 3, and his daughter just grabbed a copy of that page from your neighbor. He already has all the pages, so he doesn’t need to ask the guy in the red house for copies anymore. You receive a message from your son. He just grabbed the copy of the last page you needed. You leave the line as well, happy with the result. Instead of lining up for another hour for a new page, you now already have all the pages.
This is how peer to peer (P2P) sharing works. Instead of downloading chunks of a file from one source (and overloading that source with requests), you download it from multiple sources at the same time, who already have a copy themselves. And likewise, you then allow others to download chunks from you, that you have downloaded yourself already.
“Seeding” is the act of sharing chunks you’ve downloaded yourself. This allows other people to downloading from you, instead of downloading it from the source. In the example above, seeding refers to your wife handing out copies of the pages you already have on your desk.
“Leeching” is the opposite: you refuse to share stuff you’ve downloaded. In our example, it would be your wife telling your neighbor’s kid to get lost when they come ask for a certain page you have already.
A torrent is a method of distributing large files in which the file is broken into small pieces and distributed among a network of users. Each user who downloads the file also uploads small pieces of the file to other users. This allows for efficient distribution, as all users are simultaneously uploading and downloading pieces of the file. The process is coordinated by a central “tracker” server, which keeps track of which users have which pieces of the file. A user wanting to download a file using a torrent must first install a “torrent client” on their computer, which communicates with the tracker server and coordinates the downloading and uploading of pieces of the file.
You’d like to buy a book. One option is to go to the bookstore and spend money on it (direct download) but you don’t want to do that.
So you talk to your friend Alberto. Alberto knows everyone, and has a long list of all the people who own this book and are willing to photocopy a page (seeders).
You send a letter to each person, asking for a specific page number (leeching).
They send a letter back with that specific page. Sometimes you are missing a page, or it’s unreadable. That’s ok, you have that list and you can just ask someone else!
Now you have all the pages of the book. Because everyone helped you, you now tell Alberto that you’re willing to help. You give him your address, and you start getting letters asking for pages (becoming a seeder).
That’s fine. You can enjoy your book and help others get pages too.
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