When browsing the Internet, downloading or connecting to networks, there are many terms we can find. There are many services and platforms available, as well as protocols that allow you to perform daily tasks. If we talk about online downloads, a very present term is torrent. In this article we will talk about it. We will explain how torrents files work on the Internet that allow us to download content directly to our devices.
How torrents files work on the Internet
The ways we have to download content from the Internet are different . We can make use of applications and tools, also direct downloads, etc. No doubt something quite popular are torrent files. They allow us to download content on the network directly to our computers.
Torrent files work through the BitTorrent protocol. All of them are known as torrents. What this protocol does is share files between peers on the Internet. These files are generally dispersed in a decentralized network of users from which they are later downloaded.
Basically it means that when we download torrents from the Internet, what we do is enter a P2P operation through the BitTorrent protocol . In this way, what could be a large content load is distributed across multiple devices and connections. So also the user who downloads something is contributing to others.
In order to download this type of files and, in short, carry out this process, it is necessary to have BitTorrent clients such as qBittorrent, for example. This software makes it possible to download torrents files.
One of the most important issues is that it uses a decentralized method and this does not require a powerful server to be able to supply all the demand. If we have a Linux distribution there, for example, users do not have to download the entire file from the same server, which would require quite high resources. Simply what this protocol does is divide that file into small contributions from many users and connections.
The more users connect to the torrent, the better
Also keep in mind that the more users have connected to that torrent, the stronger the connection. This will favor the download speed, logically. It is not the same to try to download a torrent file that has a few users than another that has thousands and thousands.
This makes many small websites choose to create torrents files and distribute them to their potential users. Thus they do not need to invest in powerful servers, but simply the users themselves distribute those files and collaborate in the proper functioning.
It is true that today on the network we can find many files that are copyrighted. However, there are also an immense amount of torrents files that can be anything, such as a Linux distribution or any rights-free software.
When we talk about seeds we mean the number of users who are sharing that file. The more seeds there are, the better. On the other hand there are the leech , which are the users who are downloading that content. The more depending on the seeds, the slower the download will go. It is logical.
In short, we can say that torrents files represent an interesting way to download and share files on the Internet. It is something really widely used by users on the network.
As we have mentioned, there are important differences between torrents files and other types of downloads, such as direct ones. It is important to keep this in mind, as sometimes it will be interesting to choose one or the other possibility.