What is a torrent?

Torrents are specialized files utilized in peer-to-peer (P2P) network environments. The first P2P software designed to utilize torrents was BitTorrent by Bram Cohen.

How torrent is different from Limewire?

A torrent system works a little different from how limewire does. When you search in Limewire, the program scouts through other Limewire user files to find what best matches your search. If you choose to download a file, it makes a copy of the other persons (or group of peoples) file and puts it onto your computer.

Torrents work in much the same way. However, a separate file first needs to be downloaded. This separate file, commonly known as a torrent (.torrent) file, has all the information needed to download what you want. Basically, the torrent file is a set of instructions where and what to get. The big benefit of this system is that you can download entire libraries of files, not just one by one.

Credit

What is a .torrent file?

To start the download of a file, a user has to click on a link pointing to .torrent meta-data file. These meta-data files are not stored on the torrent trackers server, but are distributed among a number of .torrent file servers. In turn, each .torrent file points to a tracker, which keeps a global registry of all the downloaders and seeds of the corresponding file. The tracker responds to a user’s request with a list of some of the peers having (part of) the requested file, with whom the user can establish direct connections to barter for chunks of the file. One tracker can supervise the simultaneous downloads of multiple files.

What is Seed?

This is a torrent downloader who completely is finished downloading the files. Now he/she is only distributing.

What is Leecher/Peer?

This is the term used for a torrent downloader who is downloading the torrent. This would be you if your not 100% done with the download.

What is a torrent tracker?

A tracker is a program, not located on your computer, which keeps track of everyone who is downloading the same torrent. Each torrent file comes with their own instruction to which tracker the torrent belongs to. BitTorrent trackers are software server “toolkit” applications that typically run on Web sites.

Tracker software serves up torrent files for download from a web site. The torrent tracker maintains information about all BitTorrent clients utilizing each torrent. Using the tracker, the program connects to different peers from which it gets the files.

What is a bit torrent client?

A BitTorrent client is any program which implements the BitTorrent protocol. Each client is capable of preparing, requesting, and transmitting any type of computer file over a network, using the protocol.

How does it work?

What basically happens is a users browses a torrent tracker to find a torrent file of interest, download it, and open it with a BitTorrent client. The client connects to the tracker specified in the torrent file, from which it receives a list of peers currently transferring pieces of the file(s) specified in the torrent. The client connects to those peers to obtain the various pieces.

Such a group of peers connected to each other to share a torrent is called a swarm. If the swarm contains only the initial seeder, the client connects directly to it and begins to request pieces. As peers enter the swarm, they begin to trade pieces with one another, instead of downloading directly from the seeder.

Now, Getting things done? Start Downloading

First of all, you need a program that will take the torrent file and download the files associated with it. There are Softwares for torrents but because all the programs are mostly exactly the same, it doesn’t really matter which one to chose.

A lot of Torrents websites are there, where you can find torrent downloads in almost many categories.

Search for the files you want like ‘OpenSuse’ or ‘Need For Speed Most Wanted’ Game. When you get your results, download the file  utorrent should automatically identify and download and open giving you options about what files to download, where to put them etc. Press ok, and the file should start downloading. Your done!