Transferring files in Internet is one of the many facilities Internet provides us. You may be aware that files can be downloaded using HTTP or FTP. Now you can use the 'Bit Torrent' protocol to send and receive files.

Bit Torrent protocol functions in a peer-to-peer method. One person can enter into another person's computer and send are receive files. That is why this type of computers are called 'Peer's. But there is a server required to make all these computers work together. This server is called 'Tracker'.

The tracker just monitors the connections between the peers. Other than that the tracker does not know which files are being transferred between peer computers. Therefore the tracker needs a very little bandwidth to monitor a huge number of peers.

When someone uploads a file from his computer to another computer, he can also download a file from another computer simultaneously.

How Bit Torrent works?

Let us see how Bit Torrent works with an example. A few people are seated in a room. Let us consider that all these people need a complete copy of all the pages in a book. Person A says that he has pages 1-15, 29, 36-40, 55, 74-89 and 94-100. Let us assume that these pages are not with persons B, C, D, E and F. Immediately they contact A and get a copy of all these pages. Now person B announces that he has pages 17-24,32,34,41-50,57,60-70 and 90-93. Then the rest of the persons will get copies of these pages from B.

Likewise all the persons announce the pages each of them have. Those who do not have a page they will get the page from the respective persons

Very soon, all the persons in the room will have all the pages of the book. In that group a person named 'K' will be present. He will have all pages of the book. You may ask why not all A,B,C,D and E get all pages for K directly. But if all of them connect to K at the same time then they can just be receivers not senders.

Instead, if A,B,C,D and E share pages from each other then they can be both senders and receivers.

Therefore if everyone needs everything then everyone should be both receivers and senders. This is exactly the method used by Bit Torrent.

K is called 'Seed' in Bit Torrent.

What is special about Bit Torrent?

Generally, HTTP and FTP protocols in Internet use the client-server architecture. Here the client computer will just connect to the server computer. One client will not connect to another client. When many clients connect to the server the speed of the server will slow down. Both installation and usage of client-server is very easy.

Peer-to-peer method was introduced as an alternative to Client-server architecture. Grutella, eDonkey, Kazaa etc used peer-to-peer architecture. Whoever is connected to the network can send or receive files from any computer in the network. When a computer sends some files to another computer it functions as a server and when it receives a file from another computer it functions as a client.

Since a file can be shared between any file and not shared from a central server there is no way to track which files are being transferred. Therefore many started sharing illegal audio and video files using these peer-to-peer software. Peer to Peer software enables speedy transfer of files.

Bit Torrent method uses the best features of Peer-to-Peer and Client-server architectures. Computers get the different parts of a file from the 'seed' and then the computers share these parts of the file from other computers and completes the file.

How to get Bit Torrent software?

Bit Torrent is an open source software. Many versions of Bit Torrent which can run on Windows, Linux, Unix or Mac are available.

In Windows there are many Bit Torrent software such as The shadow's experimental client, burst, ABC (Another BitTorrent Client), Simple BT are some of them.

You can download bit torrent software from www.bitconjuver.org/BitTorrent or www.bittorrent.com