Oct

In Love with Torrent Downloads

With very slow internet connections (a “normal” situation here in Cameroon), I always had difficulties downloading large files. Regular downloads from links on websites was never ever a good idea so I started investigating how to download faster. I tried various download managers and finally settled to Internet Download Manager. It worked fine for me, and at times allowed me download files at a speed of 5x (five times the normal download rate).

Generally, however, there is a very big limitation to direct downloads. Just imaging a server hosting a file and about 100 people are downloading that file at once. Normally, each user will request the file, receive it in “little bits”, and those bits recombined at the destination to make the complete file. Is there no means by which the download speed can be increased by allowing the same file to be downloaded from several sources at once? This is where P2P and torrents come in.

Torrent downloads are generally faster than regular direct downloads. Instead of pointing to a single location (server), torrents contain specific information that multiple computers on a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network can read and send various parts of the requested file simultaneously.

There are special software used to download torrent files. My favourite is BitTorent. These software generally called torrent clients identify torrent files, read the information stored in them and then use that information to download the file (usually an archive e.g. zip or rar) from other computers in the P2P network.

A completely downloaded file is termed a seed. When searching for torrents, it is advisable to download that with a greater number of seeds because those download faster. Your torrent client will normally start seeding a file you have completely downloaded in order to make it available for others too. It is rude to download and immediately disconnect. Those who do the later are called lechers. Be a good seeder and continue sharing.

The last torrent I downloaded was a movie named “Down to Earth” starred by the comedian Chris Rock. In this comedy, he dies and is incarnated as a fat rich man (a person and body he intentionally chose) and tries to please the girl he loves by using the rich man’s money for the good of the community. To everyone, he appears as the fat white man but to him, in front of the mirror, he sees Chris Rock.

If you need a good laugh, watch that movie