BitTorrent is a special peer-to-peer filesharing program. Unlike other P2P clients like Kazaa, Shareaza, and Limewire, BitTorrent does not have a search engine. You download files through BitTorrent by loading
Torrent files. These files contain the filenames and special hashes for the files you want to download, as well as the tracker from which the Torrent runs. Trackers track all activity on a Torrent so your client knows where to download from and where to upload to.
BitTorrent, like most other P2P networks, has an official client and many unofficial clients. You can find the
official BitTorrent client at
http://www.bittorrent.com/. If you are new to BitTorrent (why else would you be reading this guide?
), I strongly recommend you use the official client. The client I use for Torrents is
Azureus, located at
http://azureus.sourceforge.net/download.php. This client is much more customizable than the official client, but also requires more configuration and is not for beginners.
When you open a Torrent using your client, you will be asked where you want to download to. If the Torrent is downloading a single file, you will be asked to save the file in a directory. If the Torrent is downloading a folder, like the torrents on this site, you will be asked where to save the directory to.
After setting the download location, the Torrent will start up. It will try to connect to the Tracker and then try to download from the
seeders. Once you download a portion of the files, you will begin to seed to other people. Note that you can
not properly use any files downloaded through Torrents until
after the download finishes.
It's common courtesy to leave your Torrent open after your download finishes so you can seed to other people, and you should always seed more than you leech. You should also remember that if you limit your upload speed, your download speed will also be proportionally limited, regardless of how you limit your uploads.
Hopefully this will clear up any and all problems you have about Torrents.
