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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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.
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