How do torrents work?

Torrents have become an integral part of the internet recently due to its decentralized methods. Everybody must have used or at least heard of the famous torrent technology. It is the best alternative of the conventional centralized method of downloading and uploading files over the network which takes place between only a server and client. In contrast to the client-server paradigm, there is no dedicated server in torrenting. Every user acts as a client and a server. In this article, we are going to look around the torrent technology. Let’s see how do torrents work.

Disclaimer: Any information available here is intended for general guidance purposes and we do not promote or encourage our readers to use the torrent technology to perform any kind of illegal activities such as downloading pirated content.

Before diving deeper, let’s brief ourselves with some torrent related terms.

Peers

Peers are the users who participate in the sharing process over the torrent network. In other words, they are downloading and uploading parts of a file residing on their respective devices.

Seeder

Seeders are those who have already downloaded the whole file on their device and now uploading it to the peers. Hence, a higher number of seeders tends to give faster downloading speed.

Leecher

Leechers are those who do not have the entire file but parts of it. Moreover, they do not participate in uploading them. If the number of leechers is more, the downloading speed will be slow.

Tracker

Tracker is an entity that keeps a bunch of lists of all peers over the network and distributes them to new participants.

What is a torrent?

Torrent is just like another computer file with the extension “.torrent” containing the details (metadata) of folders and files that are to be distributed over the network. In addition to the metadata of the file, it also contains the locations of different trackers. Hence, it performs as a source of information to download a particular file or files by keeping a table of contents allowing the devices to search for information by using the torrent client software such as BitTorrent or Utorrent.

How does it work?

The torrent network uses BitTorrent protocol, based on peer-to-peer(P2P). That means there is no central server system available here.

Whenever the user downloads the torrent file and loads it via any of the torrent client software, as in BitTorrent or Utorrent, the client software retrieves the information of the files to be downloaded and connect the user’s device to the network. The tracker shares the user’s IP address in order to keep the track of all the connected devices in the network.

Once the connection process is completed, the downloading process starts. The client software downloads parts of a desirable file from the other peers and seeders available on the network. Simultaneously, it will start sharing the parts as soon as some of the parts are downloaded unless the users become one of those leechers who turn off the uploading or puts upload limits on.

Once the download finishes the client software performs a checksum to make sure that all the parts are downloaded successfully. After the completion of the download, the client software starts seeding the file to other peers.

Is it safe to use?

Torrent technology is free to use and appears intriguing compared to the conventional downloading process. Hence, it raises a genuine question of online safety to its users.

The IP address of the users can be seen to all the peers on the network which can lead to privacy concerns. One way to deal with this potential issue is to use a VPN service. VPNs can provide anonymity which can cost some bucks on monthly basis. However, one thing to be noticed that using the VPN can result in decreased internet speed as the packages have to travel far enough before getting to the destination. But hey, safety is better than speed!

Another concern can be raised regarding potential viruses. The users cannot know the actual file content until the whole download gets completed. Executable files are the potential sources of viruses as people would be under the impression of downloading a crack version of the software but turns out to be a virus. A way to tackle this is to look for the torrents with a great number of seeders since the seeders must have performed security checks and they are aware of the file content. Moreover, the users must perform a virus check on their de after the download gets completed to be assured.

Lastly, most of the users use torrent technology to download pirated content such as cracked software, games, movies, and TV series, which is ILLEGAL and NOT APPRECIATED. Because of these illegal downloading activities, the governments of many countries have banned torrent sites. As a result of this, many dummy torrent sites are available on the network under similar names which could contain viruses or any other potential threats. Users are requested not to disobey the decisions taken by the authorities.

Here are some of the merits and demerits of this technology,

Merits

• The decentralization makes it efficient to use. For instance, if one source is not available then the device can connect to multiple sources to download the file.
• Can utilize the full potential of internet connection as the speed does not depend on one single server.
• Downloads can be paused and resumed anytime anywhere.
• Easily accessible.

Demerits

• Dependent on the seeders that are currently available. Hence, no guarantee like the central server system that the file would be downloaded.
• Privacy concern is raised as IP address is visible to the seeders and leechers.
• Sometimes torrents come with viruses as no one knows what is exactly inside until the download gets finished.
• Since the client software utilizes the bandwidth for downloading and uploading simultaneously, the internet speed can appear slow for other users on the same network.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that the torrent technology is evidently easy and great to use. However, in today’s world, users are using it for downloading pirated content which is not appreciated. If the proper rules and regulations are to be followed, it can be utilized to achieve optimum network usage, obviously in an ethical manner.

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By: Kunj ‘SomeN’ Patel

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