Bit Torrent

Nirav A. Vasa

Topics

What is BitTorrent?
Related Terms
How BitTorrent works
Steps involved in the working
Advantages and Disadvantages

What is Bit torrent

BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing
(P2P) communications protocol.
The protocol was designed by Bram
Cohen in April 2001.
There are numerous compatible BitTorrent
clients which run on a variety of computing
platform.

Related terms
Seed or seeder - A computer with a
complete copy of a BitTorrent file.
Leeches - People who download files but
do not share files on their own computer
with others.
Swarm - A group of computers
simultaneously sending (uploading) or
receiving (downloading) the same file.

Related terms
.torrent - A pointer file that directs your
computer to the file you want to download.
Tracker - A server that manages the
BitTorrent file-transfer process.

File sharing models

Traditional client server model
Peer-to-peer File Sharing
BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing
model which follows certain rules in its
protocol.
1. It offloads some of the file tracking work to
the central server called as the tracker.
2. It uses the principle of tit-for-tat.
3. It downloads using the rarest first policy to
ensure high availability.

How does it work ???

The file to be downloaded broken up into
identically sized pieces with a checksum
on each.
Any torrent client uses the .torrent file to
locate the tracker and the tracker gives the
information of the availability of the file
pieces.
The client downloads the file pieces from
the respective peers and in turn also
uploads the pieces it has to those peers.

How does it work ???

Steps involved

Steps involved

Download the torrent file

Contact the Tracker
Tracker Response
Peer Connection
Peer A downloads a piece from the
network
Piece exchange starts
Peers periodically contact tracker

Advantages
BitTorrent is remarkably robust and
scalable.
It performs very well in terms of handling
the transfer of large files.
While downloading, the peer also
simultaneously uploads the file pieces
which distributes the bandwidth usage
among all the peers rather than
downloading from a single server

Disadvantages
It can be used for the exchange of illegal
files (music, videos etc.) over the internet.
Download rate depends upon the
popularity of the file shared.

Thank You