12:03 AM
Praveen
What’s the best way to download files from the
internet? Many of you who are not so
tech savvy will look for software on Google and will download it from a direct
link. Generally, Google makes it easier to look for downloads which are common
and most widely used but it becomes extremely difficult to look for not so
popular downloads or when you want to download large files. Therefore, in order to download large files
you can make use of P2P file sharing softwares, which are freely available on
the internet. The P2P (peer to peer)
sharing has many benefits as compared to direct downloads. You will have the
capability to pause and resume downloads without affecting the file and its
content. This approach makes it easier to download large files, which take
hours to download depending on your bandwidth.
How do torrents work?
A torrent client downloads a file in
bits from multiple sources, which greatly increase the downloading speed.
Download files using torrent client
In order to
download a file from torrent you will need a torrent client like Bittorrent or
Utorrent. Both are freely available for download.
All you
have to do is, download the torrent client and install it on your system. The
files are not more than 20MB in size and do not take much of your hard-disk
space.
Once you
have installed the client you will have to look for the download links on the
internet. In case of torrent links, it is difficult to find them on Google.
Therefore, you will have to use a torrent search engine, which will search the
link for you. There are many search engines available online like www.torrentz.eu, which will search the link file
and display the result for you to choose.
This is the Screenshot showing the search
results for “Ubuntu Linux” on www.torrentz.com website. In similar way, you can
search for any other file, which you wish to download. Just enter any keyword and hit the search
button you will get the results within seconds.
As you can see, there are so many search
results showing in the results window.
Therefore, in order to choose the right link you will have to look for
the following attributes.
Torrent Reputation: any| low| good| verified (a verified torrent
is the best)
Peers:
The column in the green color lists the number of peers. In the above
case, the first link has the best peers. Usually, the link with the best peers
is listed on the top of other results.
When you are sure about the link you have
decided to download, Click the link and you will navigate to a new page, which
will list the websites, who have the “Ubuntu linux” file for download. Click
any one of those except for the first one, which is a sponsored and misleading
link.
After
clicking the links, a new page will open which will have the links for
download.
Just search
for the links or buttons saying “Magnet Download” or “torrent Download”
* Magnet
links: These links will automatically invoke the torrent client application
installed on your system and will start the download.
*Torrent
Download: This will download a small link file. On clicking that link file, the
client application will start and you can choose the files to download. Once
you click Ok, the downloading will start.
Double
click the link and your Bittorent (or Utorrent depending on your installation)
will start the download.
Once the download has started, you will have to
make some settings in the software, which will enhance your downloading speed.
While a torrent file is being downloaded on your computer, the downloaded parts
of the same file is being uploaded by
the software so that the other users
(called peers) who are also downloading the same file at any other location can use you as a
seed or source ,thus increasing their download speed. This mutual sharing of
file is good for all the users who are simultaneously downloading the file but
it can decrease your download speed negligibly as your computer is constantly
uploading a file to the network. Therefore, you can decrease the upload speed (although
the torrent community does not recommend this approach of file sharing. Such
downloaders who do not allow their files to upload, are known as “Leechers” as
these people are not contributing in the mutual sharing of the files.) So that
your network remains, free for downloading the file.
What are peers, seeds and leeches?
So many
people ask this question on the internet that download a torrent file for the
first time. Therefore,
what exactly are these terms? Let us
understand these with the help of an illustration.
In the above illustration, you can see that
four people Peter, Calvin, Steve, Martin are downloading a file from the two
seeds. Take the case of Martin, for Martin the other three downloaders of the
files are the peers who are also downloading the same file. Therefore, Martin’s software will show the
number of seeds as two and number of peers as three (seeds: 2 | peers: 3).The
black line indicates the download whereas the red line indicates the upload of
the same file. You can see that, in the case of Calvin, the upload
is not taking place and therefore, he would be called a leech in torrent
terminology. A leech is
a person who downloads the file and goes offline without contributing anything
to the download community. This practice is highly discouraged by the sharing community,
as the whole concept of peer 2 peer sharing is dependent on its users to work
successfully.
