how torrents in piratesbay works in downloading files?

Answer 1

A way to think of torrents is like instead of getting a complete book from a library, instead you collect it a page at a time. This has a few advantages and disadvantages.

One advantage is that small chunks of information are easier to swap around. And since there are so many chunks the chances of finding one of them out there is pretty good. Likewise, unlike a traditional download you don't have to get the chunks consecutively - you can grab the pages in any order and then just sort them as you collect them.

How this works ideally is that you start the torrent and your computer looks around the internet for a bunch of other people trying to collect and distribute the same information. Once it assembles a list, it starts grabbing the chunks of data. But it doesn't JUST download chunks - you computer becomes part of a network of information transfer. So after you get piece number 476 from user A, you send it on to user B and C.

Since everyone is sending information back and forth to everyone else, it essentially takes what would be a large, sequential load on one pathway and distributes it across a huge area. This is really good for providers of files who do not want to pay for tons and tons of bandwidth to hand the files out.

To carry our analogy further, it would as if you put a book on reserve and the library only arranged for someone to send you one page. When you finished that page, you mail it to the next person on the reserve list and someone else mails you the next page. You'd still get to read the whole book, but the library doesn't have to mail a whole book back and forth from each person who wants to read it.

However, because you are not JUST downloading a huge block of information from one source, it may take you comparatively much longer to actually get it. You have to arrange the connections, spend some of your time uploading, and do a little bit of file shuffling and connecting. Likewise, the ease with which the torrent works is dependant on the number of people IN the torrent - if you're swapping with only one other person, it's obviously even worse than if you had just downloaded that huge block. All of which is why torrents aren't used for EVERYTHING.

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