Torrents Guide for Dummies is a guide to help beginners to the whole bittorent protocol get started.So you have been hearing everyone talking about “how they download tv shows they have missed using torrents” but you never really got the hang of it.I will give you some insights into what Bittorents can do and what it really is.I will try my best to keep it simple.

Bittorrent is a P2P(peer to peer) file sharing protocol orginally designed and created by Bram Cohen.Currently Bittorent protocal is maintained by BitTorrent inc.It was designed as means to cut down on costly server and bandwidth resources.

Cachelogic,a internet traffic company claims 35% of all traffic on the web is from torrents.CableLabs, the research organization of the North American cable industry, believes that BitTorrent represents 55% of the upstream traffic on the cable companies’ access network.

»How does it work?

Basically bittorent protocol functions by a tracker coordinating transfer of bits and pieces of data to you from other clients who have finished downloading or are currently downloading the same file.Traditional filesharing protocols were designed to connect you directly to a single source.

In practice,bittorent model is much faster because of its ability to tap into a wide variety of sources for download.A key point to note is that Bittorrent protocol is designed to reward those who share files upward with higher download speeds.Those who are not willing to upload are punished with slow download speeds.

»What do I need to start downloading with Torrents?

There are a few things you need to start downloading with torrents:

Here I will provide the most popular bittorent tools out there.

1.Bittorrent Client such as:

Utorrent-One of the best Bittorent clients available for download at the moment.It combines both fuctionality and performance into a small package.It only requires 1MB of harddrive space and memory,which is why its no suprise most expert downloaders refer to uttorent as “micro torrent”.

Although utorrent only requires a small amount of system resources,it offers full fuctionality to both seeders and downloaders.This is one piece of software I would recommend most to anyone begining to use bittorrents.

Azureus-Once regarded as one of the best bittorent clients has only now been replaced by utorrent.Azureus still enjoys a strong fan base that is constantly working on improving it’s capabilities.In terms of functionality,Azureus is still one of the most recommended programs by the torrent community.

ABC-This client is capable of some advanced features and it’s very popular among the community.

Bitcomet-Yet another popular bittorrent client with some fancy capabilities.This is definitely a good client but not in the standards of Utorrent or Azureus.

BitTorrent client-Authored by Bram Cohen the creator of bittorrent protocol itself.It’s very useful client that is very fast but not very friendly to beginners.

2.You will need a Torrent search engine to find files that you are looking for:

Isohunt-A torrent site that has incredible amount of files in its database.

Torrentspy-Torrent search engine with a very friendly design and great amount of users.

The Pirate Bay-It’s a swedish torrent website that has faced many legal issues but still remains.This is definitely one of the most popular torrent sites available.Their database is massive compared to its competitors.

Torrentreactor-This is a site well known to many torrent users.

3.If you are using a internet connection with a router/firewall then you will need to open some ports:

In order to achieve this you can use this site.The author gives us a comprehensive guide into hows it done.If you are using a software firewall,then make exceptions for your bittorrent client of choice.You can also make exceptions for ports ranging from 6881-6889 in your firewall to accomplish this task.

»Torrent Terms You Should Know:

“Swarming” is about splitting large files into hundreds of smaller “bits”, and then sharing those bits across a “swarm” of dozens of linked users.

“Swarm” swarm is when all peers are sharing a torrent 

“Tracking” is when specific servers help swarm users find each other. Download speeds are controlled by these tracking servers.

“Availability” The number of full copies of the file available to the client.

“Choked” Describes a peer to whom the client refuses to send file pieces

“Interested” Describes a downloader who wishes to obtain pieces of a file the client has

“Leech” A leech is usually a peer who has a negative effect on the swarm by having a very poor share ratio - in other words, downloading much more than they upload

“Peer” A peer is one instance of a BitTorrent client running on a computer on the Internet to which other clients connect and transfer data

“Tracker” A tracker is a server thats keeps track of which seeds and peers are part of the swarm.

»If you need a step by step guide to download,then use this link.