Bit torrent?

botheredbothered Manchester UK
edited February 2004 in Science & Tech
I've seen mention of bit torrent a few times in here and I've had a little browse. How does it work? Does anybody here use it? How legal is it?
Info guys, please.

Comments

  • TheBaronTheBaron Austin, TX
    edited February 2004
    download the bittorrent client, find .torrents that are hosted, say www.suprnova.org

    it takes the .torrents and starts DLing, you can figure out the details

    the legality is dependant on what you download with it, just like any file sharing utility. for example, get linux isos, youre okay, download some pre-release movie, you might get hammered by paramount (personal experience).

    either way, a nice piece of software
  • tophericetopherice Oak Ridge, TN
    edited February 2004
    The absolute best torrent client I've used is Shareazza. http://www.sofotex.com/Shareazza-download_L11563.html.
    Another great site for torrents is http://btsites.tk they have tons of links to torrent sites.
  • NecropolisNecropolis Hawarden, Wales Icrontian
    edited February 2004
    The best torrent client I have found is ABC http://pingpong-abc.sourceforge.net/

    This is the problem with open source stuff, everyone has a different program to recommend. Oh and dont forget www.novasearch.net that lets you search suprnova.org.
  • botheredbothered Manchester UK
    edited February 2004
    I found and tried a couple of downloads just to see if it was any good. It was a fraction of the speed of a dial up! Over 2 hours to download five meg. I turned it off. I'll try some of the ones you recommend guys, thanks.
  • NecropolisNecropolis Hawarden, Wales Icrontian
    edited February 2004
    Technically this is software so I am moving it to correct place :D
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited February 2004
    Bittorrent requires time to ramp up speed as you establish your place in the queue and other people hop onto the transfer. It's also a ratio-based client; the faster/more you upload, the faster you'll download.

    Just leave it on, minimize it, and do your thing. Check back in a few hours.
  • JimboraeJimborae Newbury, Berks, UK New
    edited February 2004
    Thrax wrote:
    Bittorrent requires time to ramp up speed as you establish your place in the queue and other people hop onto the transfer. It's also a ratio-based client; the faster/more you upload, the faster you'll download.

    Just leave it on, minimize it, and do your thing. Check back in a few hours.

    Correct as usual, I would alos add that I get faster downloads by getting something that has a lot of seeds on it already, although this isn't always the case. You also need to to have your firewall correctly configured so that you can connect to other clients. Until I got this sorted I had slow downloads, now that its configured right & the right ports are open I regularly get 80-100 kb\s on a 1mb line.
    For a newbie to this, such as myself, I found Shadows Experimental client the easiest to use/configure.
  • ShortyShorty Manchester, UK Icrontian
    edited February 2004
    Azureus (http://azureus.sourceforge.net/) has worked for me with BT, awesome download speeds, stable as a rock and very intuitive interface :)
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited February 2004
    As a note; I use Another Bittorrent Client (<i>ABC</i>).
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited February 2004
    The nice thing about bittorrent is after you start downloading, its not going to fail. If you try downloading a multi-gigabyte file conventionally and the server folds, you're screwed. When you use BT, if a seed pulls out the network adjusts to compensate. If there are no seeds, you download from other leechers up to the amount of the file they've got while you wait for another seed to show up. Also BT hash checks everything as its downloading so you don't have to worry about getting a corrupted file either.

    Download speeds ARE slow. However, I think that's balanced out by how much stuff you can get if you're patient, particularly stuff you can't get any other way.

    -drasnor :fold:
  • ginipigginipig OH, NOES
    edited February 2004
    Use the torrent search engine, and sort as descending # of seeds.

    I followed Shorty's Azureus suggestion, and life has been great!

    For some reason, the previous release of Shareaza took up 50-70% of my Cpu. The current release seems to have fixed that.
  • ShortyShorty Manchester, UK Icrontian
    edited February 2004
    :D cool!
  • GargGarg Purveyor of Lincoln Nightmares Icrontian
    edited February 2004
    Shorty wrote:
    Azureus (http://azureus.sourceforge.net/) has worked for me with BT, awesome download speeds, stable as a rock and very intuitive interface :)

    Odd... when I try to run it nothing happens. I've installed Java, too. :scratch:
  • ginipigginipig OH, NOES
    edited February 2004
    Did you complete the initial Configuration Wizard? If it's settings-related, you could always check out the options page.

    Which Java did you get, btw?
  • PowerMDPowerMD OR room #3
    edited February 2004
    suprnova and novasearch aren't up ???
    anyone have new web address for them?
  • BlackHawkBlackHawk Bible music connoisseur There's no place like 127.0.0.1 Icrontian
    edited February 2004
    PowerMD wrote:
    suprnova and novasearch aren't up ???
    anyone have new web address for them?
    IIRC they were changing dns and stuff so it'll be down for awhile.
  • GargGarg Purveyor of Lincoln Nightmares Icrontian
    edited February 2004
    ginipig wrote:
    Did you complete the initial Configuration Wizard? If it's settings-related, you could always check out the options page.

    Which Java did you get, btw?

    I didn't get a configuration wizard when I tried to start it... how odd. I got the JRE 1.4.2. I've tried the offline and online install. :confused:
  • TheBaronTheBaron Austin, TX
    edited February 2004
    i've been using TorrentStorm, i like it a lot
  • robbyrobby Olympia, WA New
    edited February 2004
    How do I configure my firewall for bittorrent with win xp pro sp1?
  • EMTEMT Seattle, WA Icrontian
    edited February 2004
    I'm still using the burst! client - although it has a bug now and then and can't pause, it works fine.

    I'm kind of surprised by several of these bittorrent descriptions. For me, the edonkey network is the place to go to download obscure things slowly. And there you will wait on queues and slooowly get a semidecent speed. With bittorrent you're above 100 k/s on a good torrent in not much time at all. So really it's the place I go for fast, mainstream, .. legal downloads.
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