IT tidbits - Torrents rule!

If you follow much techie stuff, you would have come across the term torrent or bittorrent. The first refers to the actual protocol and the latter is one example of the program that utilizes that protocol. Though, bittorrent is what started it all and could be used to refer to the protocol as well, the term torrent is preferred to keep it more generic as there are many clients that you can choose from today. My preferred client is utorrent on Windows machines and Azerus on the Mac (though utorrent is rumoured to be coming out with a Mac client, at which point I will switch). utorrent is a very small download (184kb I think) for a very full featured and quick torrent client. I like the way it organizes things and without fiddling with settings, it does the job as advertised.

To make the case for torrents (and no, not for just stealing movies, porn, TV and software), you need look no further than my experience this morning in the wee hours before dawn. I was working on the final touches of my father's system that I have unfortunately had for about a month in my office (my sister's is next). For some reason it refused to install the Windows updates that it had downloaded so I went to Autopatcher (a sysadmins best friend) to get the latest files. They are having some domain issues so it took a while to track down where the files where in alternate locations. I chose to try and download the actual file at Softpedia as I have used them before. It was going slowly and they did not seem to have the June update so I went off to a torrent tracker to get that one. Well, it used 32 trackers to download the file in one sixth the time fo the actual file download. In fact, I went and got the July update (the same one I was downloading from Softpedia) from another tracker while my current download was still only at 25 percent.

That's the power of this little protocol, and the reason why the music and movie and porn and software industry hates it so much. The ability to gather these files from multiple sources is immensely useful. When everyone is online and sharing the file, it makes "sharing" a very quick exercise. Just about anything can be found in a torrent if you look hard enough for it. We routinely download TV shows our PVR missed or we forget to set to tape. I know of friends who get still-in-theatre movies to watch, though I stay away from those because they tend to be crappy transfers and DW, TC and I love to go out to the cinema. Use the link above to get utorrent (or try the original Bittorrent) and use Isohunt or Mininova to get you started on looking up torrents.

Enjoy.