How does BitTorrent work and is it faster than Kazaa?
People on the forums keep telling me to use BitTorrent instead of Kazaa for downloading large files. But I don't understand how it works — you need a .torrent file first? And you have to upload while downloading? My upload speed is terrible on my DSL line. Will this slow down my internet for everyone else in the house?
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BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer protocol where everyone downloading a file also uploads pieces of it to others. The more popular a file is, the faster it downloads because there are more people sharing pieces. Yes, you need a .torrent file first — find them on sites like TorrentSpy or Mininova. It's way faster than Kazaa for popular files. For your DSL, set your upload limit to about 80% of your max upload speed.
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BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer protocol where everyone downloading a file also uploads pieces of it to others. The more popular a file is, the faster it downloads because there are more people sharing pieces. Yes, you need a .torrent file first — find them on sites like TorrentSpy or Mininova. It's way faster than Kazaa for popular files. For your DSL, set your upload limit to about 80% of your max upload speed.
For large files like Linux ISOs and game demos, BitTorrent destroys Kazaa in speed. A file that would take 8 hours on Kazaa might take 1 hour on BitTorrent. The catch is that you need to 'seed' (upload) after you finish downloading — it's considered rude to download and immediately close the client. Popular torrent clients are uTorrent (tiny, fast) and Azureus (more features but uses more memory).
Yes it will use your upload bandwidth which can make browsing feel slow. In your BitTorrent client (I recommend uTorrent), set a global upload limit. Also, if your ISP is throttling BitTorrent — some are starting to do this — you might need to enable encryption in the settings. And unlike Kazaa, BitTorrent doesn't install spyware.
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