What's the difference between Bit torrent and lime wire?

Answer 1

Eh.. the previous respondents have provided some good answers; I'm just chiming in additional info, really.

But quickly: Bittorrent does *not* require subscription; only certain bittorrent sites.

The added info I have is more technical than anything really important: unlike Limewire (or gnutella, napster, etc.), bittorrent gets it's speed because it downloads bits of files "first come first serve", essentially locking the contents of a file until the download is complete; meanwhile, an application like Limewire will only download portions of a file *in linear succession*, which enables even a partially downloaded file (i.e. a video...and let's say, about 6%) to be previewed almost immediately (at least the 6% worth).

While Limewire is a self-contained network, bittorrent users are completely disjoined save their p2p connection to a particular file at the moment.

IMPORTANT DISTINCTION: Unlike Limewire, which only contains a rather sparse folder-like line of information regarding a file, each torrent on a bittorrent network has *an entire webpage of it's own*; besides file properties, each webpage also has fields in which peers can rate, comment on, provide/request password suggestions, link to other files/sites, request/supply explanations for how the file could be used, how long the file has been indexed, who uploaded it, how many times it has been downloaded, etc. To me, this feature alone actually makes torrent files somewhat safer to download than from the networks...or rather, it can make a person feel a little more confident downloading something to their computer when they have some clue of the history/merit of the file.

Needless to say, I'm not objective: I would advocate bittorrent all the way.

Answer 2

BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer (P2P) file distribution protocol. The protocol was originally designed and created by programmer Bram Cohen, and is now maintained by BitTorrent, Inc.

BitTorrent is a method of distributing large amounts of data widely without the original distributor incurring the whole of the corresponding costs of hardware, hosting and bandwidth resources. Instead of the distributor alone servicing each recipient, under BitTorrent the recipients each also supply data to newer recipients, thus significantly reducing the cost and burden on any given individual.
Whereas Limewire is a peer to peer file sharing client. In effect it means that if u and me run limewire and enable access to a few folders, I could download content on your HDD directly and vice versa.
Bit torrent requires subscription. Limewire is free. But bit torrent will have a lot more content than limewire is able to access.

Answer 3

Only n00bs use limewire!

Just kidding... Limewire is a slower and less safe way of getting smaller files. Bittorent is safer and faster and you can get really huge files with it.