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Bitspirit is a popular BitTorrent client that can be downloaded from www.lanspirit.com. The program has an extremely user-friendly yet powerful interface that will not intimidate newcomers. It provides full BitTorrent protocol implementation as laid down by the original designer and therefore has no compatibility problems. We highly recommend this one.

Azureus is a Java-based client that utilises a graphic user interface (GUI) with extensive visualizations/statistics about the transfer. It has flavors for Linux and Macintosh-based machines as well. You will need the 1.4 Java runtime environment by Sun Microsystems to be installed if you want to run this software. It offers multiple torrent downloads, an embedded tracker, start/stop seeding options and instant access to numerous pieces of information about your torrents.

• Jan 2004
• Jun 2004

Shareaza is yet another common torrent client that supports the BitTorrent, eDonkey and Gnutella networks. It’s one really good feature to add into a program. It allows you to use the same program to search for files on the eDonkey and Gnutella network and also lets you use it for downloading torrent files. However, it is P2P e or: Any network that does not have fixed clients and servers, but a number of peer nodes that function as both clients and servers to the other nodes on the network. Any node is able to initiate or complete any supported transaction.

Peer: Another computer on the Internet that you connect to for transferring data. Generally a peer does not have the complete file; otherwise it would be called a seed.

Seed: A computer that has a complete copy of a certain torrent. You can also start a BitTorrent (BT) client with a complete file, and once BT has checked the file it will connect and seed the file to others. When a new torrent is posted to a tracker, someone must seed it in order for it to be available to others.

Tracker: A server on the Internet that coordinates the action of BitTorrent clients. When you open a torrent, your machine contacts the tracker and asks for a list of peers to contact. Periodically, during the transfer, your machine will check in with the tracker, telling it how much you’ve downloaded and uploaded, how much is left, and the state you’re in (starting, finished download, stopping.) Hashing: A hash function converts a large input into an output in a much smaller range.

The official client BitTorrent is the latest supported version from Bram Cohen. It has the fewest features of all the clients, and releases new versions slower than other Bittorrent clients available. It is feature-limited but is good for its stability.

There are plenty more clients available on the Internet-all you have to do is type ‘bittorrent client’ on any search engine and you’ll find plenty of links.

So it’s torrents aII the way then.

Let us use eDonkey2000 for a comparison, a peer-to-peer file-sharing application using the Multisource FileTra nsfer Protocol. The eDonkey file-sharing network is decentralized, much like many other file-sharing networks-there is no one perma nent server to which all the clients connect.

Rather, both clients and servers connect to the network. Clients allow users to connect to the network and to share files. Servers act as meeting hubs for the clients. However, nodes in this file-sharing network usually share and download a much larger number offiles, making the available bandwidth for each transfer much smaller.

BitTorrent transfers are typically very fast, because all nodes in a group concentrate on transferring a single file or collection offiles. Furthermore, the standard eDonkey2000 protocol provides little ‘leech resistance’. As the name implies, leech resistance reduces the impact of people who wish to download the file as quickly as possible and then disconnect without helping to upload the file to others.

Also, BitTorrent has an open source implementation. Programmers therefore are free to take the source code of the program and modify it, if they feel there is something they’d like to change. This is one aspect that has helped BitTorrent establish its fan database. Users across the world have made their own BitTorrent clients, each offering something better than the other. There is a multitude of BitTorrent clients on the Internet. Here are some that are considered very good in terms offeatures and functionality.

A high level of robustness and the ‘one¬click download’ user interface are important factors in the success of BitTorrent. BitTorrent is different from other P2P networks in three important respects.

First, it does not include a search mechanism, but relies on central, directory-based search facilities as provided by web sites. These maintain lists of all files currently available for downloading.

Secondly, it employs a file¬level sharing policy instead of the common directory-level sharing policy. This means that there will be no ’shared folder’ option where users can view and/or download files.

Thirdly, it provides a bartering mechanism among the clients who are downloading the same file, which introduces a certain level of fairness into the system while at the same time increasing efficiency.

To start sharing a certain file, .torrent file is first created by a user which is then spread out by usual methods. It is often placed on regular web sites or even sent bye-mail. In fact, there are various web sites which are dedicated to stocking BitTorrent links.

A torrent link in essence contains a coded address of the ‘tracker’ whose purpose is to locate sources from which BitTorrent can download the different parts of a file. The size of the torrent file depends on the size of the original file/s because it contains hashes, that is, information pertaining to separate blocks of the actual file.

Other information may also be present-such as general statistics regarding the number of users who have the complete file, those who have incomplete files, and so on.

BitTorrent has an efficient working mechanism. It uses a process called ’swarming’ where a file is broken down into several parts for easy circulation amongst a large group of people. Here, everyone downloading the file has to also upload it simultaneously. This really helps as each user contributes to its circulation, which speeds up the entire process.

What is interesting is that when you start downloading a file via BitTorrent, the download may not necessarily start in the beginning. In fact, rarer parts are collected first from users on the BitTorrent network. Of course, for a download to be completed, at least one person must have the complete file.

In such a case, a ’seed’will be required to enter the group, after which peers will download different parts of the incomplete information simultaneously and then reorganize it amongst themselves later. This is a very efficient method offile sharing.