Essentially the title. I was trying to download a file and my colleagues told me that I should use uTorrent. I did some research and figured that this was very popular a while ago, but since then has decreased in popularity. How does it work and why did it decrease in popularity?
In: Technology
You want a puzzle set. In your classroom, some of your classmates have the same puzzle and are willing to make copies of their pieces and give them to you so that you can also have your own puzzle.
Some classmates already have the full puzzle, so they can get to work on making all the pieces for you straight away. Some of your classmates have some of the puzzle pieces and are also making them for you but don’t have the full set yet, so they’re making copies of the puzzle pieces they already have. Some of your classmates can make the puzzle pieces really quickly, while some take a little longer.
You also have classmates who also want the puzzle but don’t have it, so they’re asking your classmates who do have the puzzle to make them pieces as well. Because your classmates who do have the puzzles also have to make puzzle pieces for both you and your other classmates, it’s going to take you a little bit longer to get a full set than if it was just you waiting
One of your classmates who previously didn’t have a puzzle set but now received one has now run away and will not help make puzzle pieces for the other kids who are still waiting for a full puzzle set.
In this metaphor, the puzzle set is a file you want to download using torrenting, also known as peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing. Your classmates are other peers/users on the network sharing the same file. The puzzle pieces being made represent the bits of data that make up the file you’re downloading. How quickly your classmates can make puzzle pieces and how quickly you can receive them refers to download/upload speed.
Peers that have the full file (full puzzle set) are known as seeders who upload the file to other downloaders for their benefit so they can download it. Peers who are downloading the file but don’t have it yet are known as leechers. Even if peers don’t have the full file, they can still seed the parts of the file they do have (the incomplete puzzle set) to others.
When you’re downloading files, you are yourself a leecher until you download the full file and begin to seed to others. You are also competing with other peers/leechers who also want the file and are downloading it. They’re considered competition because you’re sharing the bandwidth of data (how many people are making puzzle pieces x how quickly they make them) being uploaded from seeders.
Peers/leechers who download a file but do not help seed afterwards do something that is called a hit-and-run. They’ve reaped the benefits of torrenting, but have not given back to the community – this is considered bad etiquette.
Torrenting (puzzle making) works better than traditionally downloading a file from a dedicated server (buying a puzzle set from a toy store) because the speed at which files can be distributed increases the more peers have that complete file as they can give the files to each other. However, it relies on people seeding to each other and having at least one person with the complete file. If not enough people seed a file, it will become harder and harder to download that torrent and be able to seed it to others.
Latest Answers