What is bittorent and how/why does it work?

[Fryguy8]

I've read the site but I'm still confused as to how exactly this thing works.

[carbon-12]

basically you download these tiny files called ".torrents" from websites. Then you load these files into the bittorent client and itll start downloading the file from other people that are using bittorent. The only um...problem is YOU HAVE TO SHARE or else youll get horrible dl speed.

[Fryguy8]

so where do I get .torrent files from? Like say I set it up so I'm sharing blah blah x amount of things, and I want thing y, how do I get it?

does this thing just run as a daemon in the background with a front-end or ?

[carbon-12]

1.) You have to use a search engine(google, yahoo, etc) to search for the torrents

2.) About the sharing. People can only download the file that your downloading. It dosent work like a normal p2p app(kazaa, emule,etc). The dl speed is dictated by the amount of u/l youll allow(IE/ you set 30kb/s and you will automatically be able to download...um around 100kb/s, im not quite sure)

3.) I know theres an experimental GUI for windows but i cant find one for linux, so you have to run it in the terminal.


Hope this helps!