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Torrent

INTRODUCTION
Torrent is a method for file sharing (commonly called download) via internet using a new peer-to-peer protocol called torrent thats usually used to distribute large amounts of data. A torrent is a file that is used by a program called a bit torrent client, which then uses the file to download the actual file you want. Basically, it's the middleman of the download process. You don't really need him, but still he remains. Torrent protocol is different than ordinary conventional transfer method. The conventional downloads commonly using the HTTP or FTP protocol which needs a server for placed the data. A torrent protocol not always using the server, a torrent can download data both from server and client. So its possible to download data from client when the server is down. The main distributor of the complete file or collection acts as the first seed which called seeder. Each peer who downloads the data also uploads them to other peers. Torrent is a small file (around few kilobytes) with the suffix .torrent, which contains all the information needed to download a file the torrent was made for. That means it contains file names, their sizes, where to download from and so on. You can get torrents for almost anything on lots of web sites and torrent search engines. Torrent is the most popular way of downloading large files, including movies and games. Downloading with a torrent is advantageous especially when downloading files, which are momentarily very popular and which lots of people are downloading. Because the more people download the file, the higher speed for everyone. Programmer Bram Cohen designed the protocol in April 2001 and released a first implementation on 2 July 2001. It is now maintained by Cohen's company Torrent.

TORRENT PRINCIPLE
The Bit Torrent protocol was made mainly for temporarily very popular files - for example when a new movie or music album comes up. The download speed increases proportionately to the number of users downloading the same file and that is the biggest advantage of torrents. Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, CDLU

Torrent

When you are downloading something through torrent, you share your already downloaded part at the same time (for this reason you break the law in most countries when you are downloading illegal data). When you start downloading, your application contacts a "tracker" server, which co-ordinates all clients (other users' applications). From the tracker the application finds out where to download from, which parts have the other users already downloaded and so on. Also your application informs the tracker about what part you were able to download until now - and by that it gives it at other users' disposal

TORRENT CLIENTS
There is a large amount of free applications that are able to download with torrents. You can choose here from the most commonly used (and also the best, they're most used for a reason). Setting a Torrent Client If there are no other complications, usually the only thing you need to set is your upload speed. If you don't know it, you can easily find it out on speedtest.net.

Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, CDLU

Torrent Download the clients o uTorrent This is the most commonly used torrent client. It is very popular for its simplicity, reliability and also its size - only around 200KB. The clear choice for newbies! The "u" at the beginning of the name means micro, they rather use "u" because it's easier to write and there are no problems with encoding.

utorrent

BitSpirit

o BitSpirit A client famous for its possibility to download from private trackers without registration. Most commonly used to download from TorrentLeech.org, because this tracker usually provides downloads at amazing speeds. Can often fill all of the connection speed.

TORRENT SEARCH ENGINES


There are numerous torrent search engines where one can find whatever he wanted. However some of them are crawling with annoying adverts and so on. Also be aware of fake torrents - they are not very exceptional.

Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, CDLU

Torrent o The search engines

Torrentz.com Perhaps the most reliable searching server. It doesn't have its own torrent database, but searches on the other servers' databases instead - therefore it finds practically everything there is.

Newtorrents.info A well-arranged server with new torrents, as the name says. The torrents on front page are updated daily, but you can also search for a bit older torrents. If a torrent is a fake or somehow bad, it is usually recognised fast and written in comments or even the torrent's name.

TORRENT WEBSITES
The Torrent tracker is a website. Theres a lots of Torrent trackers on the internet, and almost all website using the same method. The most popular Torrent Website is The Pirate Bay (http://thepiratebay.com), isoHunt (http://isohunt.com), and Demonoid (http://www.demonoid.com). The Pirate Bay: The Pirate Bay (often abbreviated TPB) is a Swedish website that serves as an index for torrent files that it tracks. It bills itself as "the world's largest BitTorrent tracker" and is ranked 91 (as of 16 July 2008) in the Alexa ranking list. Initially established in November. According to the Los Angeles Times The Pirate Bay is "one of the world's largest facilitators of illegal downloading", and "the most visible member of a burgeoning international anticopyright or pro-piracy movement. Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, CDLU

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isoHunt: isoHunt is a BitTorrent index with over 1,100,00 torrents in its database and 16 million peers from indexed torrents. With 7.4 million unique visitors as of May 2006, isoHunt is one of the most popular BitTorrent search engines. Thousands of torrents are added to it each day as well as deleted for a multitude of reasons. On average, isoHunt users perform over 40 million unique searches per month. Demonoid: Demonoid is a website and Torrent tracker that was originated by an anonymous Serbian known only by the pseudonym Deimos. The website indexes torrents uploaded by its members. It was the second largestand is the most popular private tracker for over a year, the 403rd most popularly ranked website in July 2007 according to Alexa, and had an estimated 3 million peers in September 2007. The site went off-line on November 9, 2007 due to alleged legal threats from the Canadian Recording Industry Association. On April 11, 2008 the site was brought back on-line. A news announcement was posted on the homepage announcing that site had a new administrator due to the departure of Deimos, who reportedly left the position for personal reasons.

FILE TRANSFER PROTOCOL


A Torrent client is any program that implements the Torrent protocol. Each client is capable of preparing, requesting, and transmitting any type of computer file over a network, using the protocol. So the torrent process is always depending with torrent client itself. Theres come torrent technical term, such as: o Seed: Seed is a side that provides complete parts of file. More seeder you have, you get more speed. In example if there 10 torrent client act as seeder, so thats mean theres 10 complete file were distributed/shared. o Peer: Peer providing the initial copy is called the initial seeder, which doesnt have a complete file. A peer currently transferring pieces of the files specified in the torrent. Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, CDLU

Torrent o Ratio: Ratio is comparison between the uploader and downloader. Torrent ratio is a number calculated by dividing the amount of data that user has uploaded by the amount of data they have downloaded. Ratio over means that user sent more data then received. o Leecher: Leecher is a peer thats not share its data. The leecher downloads the data, but he doesnt upload it in the same time. The leecher is a client who has a bad ratio. o Swarm: Swarm is overall side who joined the transfer process. o Torrent Client: is any program that implements the Torrent protocol. Each client is capable of preparing, requesting, and transmitting any type of computer file over a network, using the protocol. Example of torrent application such as BitTorent, Torrent, BitComet, KTorrent, Opera Browser, and Deluge.

DATA DISTRIBUTION METHOD


The torrent file (with extension .torrent) is not currently a file; it acts as an address or carrier to the main file. The .torrent address will guide to the torrent server or client who has a file thats requested. Torrent makes many small data requests over different TCP sockets, while web browsers typically make a single HTTP request. The torrent protocol is different with ordinary protocol like FTP; in FTP the download process is using a server as the main place of data. And also it can only download a single file from a single server. In example, with FTP we cant download a folder (not a file) from multiple servers. The torrent protocol can download both from multiple servers and multiple clients. So the torrent doesnt depending with a server to download the file, it can also download from client who has the requested file. This condition is useful while the servers are down. And also it can download multiple file or folder. BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer protocol for distributing large, popular content over the Internet. Peer-to-peer software enables users to download content from each other, avoiding the bottleneck of a central server. In BitTorrent, clients initially contact a central server to get a list of peers, then negotiate with the peers to download blocks of the file. Organizations can receive significant benefits by distributing their content via BitTorrent. They can reduce the load on their servers and still provide customers with faster Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, CDLU

Torrent

downloads by using torrents to distribute content. If a download is popular, a traditional web server can get bogged down with the many requests, and the customer experience suffers. With BitTorrent, clients can download popular files more quickly without taxing the main server. Because of these benefits, there is a lot of useful, legal content available for distribution through the BitTorrent protocol. Many software companies and open source projects, including OpenOffice.org and Eclipse.org, distribute their software through torrents. In addition, most Linux distributions are available through torrents. Many artists who are interested in gaining a wider audience post their music and videos for downloads as well. These types of downloads are found on websites such as www.legaltorrents.com. However, despite the benefits, many organizations are forced to ban the use of BitTorrent by its members for three main reasons. The first reason is because Bit-Torrent can be used to download illegal content, including pirated software, movies, music, etc. Several BitTorrent sites that provide content have been shut down because of copyright issues. Users who download these files are violating copyright laws, and an organization can be held responsible for any copyright infringement by its members. Vicarious infringement occurs whenever there is an infringement and a party who benefits from the infringement was also in a position to control the actions. Employers and schools can be held responsible as vicarious infringers, and even if the organization is not ultimately held responsible, the legal costs and publicity are best avoided. Second, BitTorrent clients can consume a lot of bandwidth. BitTorrent consumed up to 30% of the total bandwidth throughout their networks. Even in organizations that dont ban BitTorrent clients, administrators may still choose to limit the amount of bandwidth that BitTorrent clients can use. Finally, organizations may choose to prohibit BitTorrent because of the large volume of objectionable content available through peer-to-peer software. An additional problem with this material is that security can be compromised with the large amount of spy-ware and viruses associated with these types of files. Our solution to balance legitimate organization concerns with the benefits of downloading content via BitTorrent is to create a BitTorrent proxy. This proxy is similar to a web caching proxy and provides a central location for controlling the use of BitTorrent. This centralized control allows an administrator to filter out copyrighted works and objectionable content. It also gives the benefit of reducing redundant downloads and the ability to control how much bandwidth can be used indicate Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, CDLU

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Figure A: Architecture of the BitTorrent Proxy System: the directional arrows communication between components. For BitTorrent traffic. Users outside of the organization benefit as well by having a constant source for torrents the organization makes available. The overall architecture of the BitTorrent Proxy, as shown in Figure 1.1, can be divided up into three basic components: Bit Torrent Proxy The BitTorrent Proxy receives download requests from the entire organization. When the proxy receives a download request, it checks a database to find the current status of the torrent. If the torrent is approved, the proxy initiates a download using a standard BitTorrent client. Once the download is complete, the proxy updates the database to reflect the new status. If the download would exceed bandwidth limits, the proxy adds the torrent to a download queue and the torrent is scheduled as bandwidth becomes available. The proxy responds to web clients with an HTML page that includes the current status of the torrent download, and provides a download link if applicable. The proxy also starts BitTorrent seeds, which allow torrent distribution when approved by the administrator. When a seed is authorized, the proxy immediately begins to upload the requested torrent. All uploads are restricted by a global upload bandwidth cap.

Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, CDLU

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Web Administration The administration component provides the organization with the ability tocontrol which files are allowed and the usage of organization resources. All modifications to the filtering rules and BitTorrent configuration are controlled with this component. The administrative component provides a web-based interface to control files available for download, files available for upload to other BitTorrent clients, and maximum bandwidth allotments. Administrators have the option of allowing single files, or entire sites through a whitelist. When the administrator approves a torrent request, it is recorded in the database. The administrative component also provides settings to control the maximum upload and download bandwidth usage of the BitTorrent client. Firefox Extension The end-users interface is a Firefox extension. When a user requests a torrent file, the extension redirects the request to the BitTorrent proxy. A simple web page is shown with the status of that file, whether it is approved or denied, and the download progress. The download progress automatically updates through AJAX. Once the file has been downloaded, the user can download the file through HTTP by clicking on a hyperlink. We have developed a BitTorrent Proxy to provide this functionality to organizations. Our version is currently running on keystone.byu.edu, a server in the Internet Research Laboratory at Brigham Young University. This server also hosts the ad- ministration portion accessible at http://keystone.byu.edu/_rlarsen/index.php. This BitTorrent Proxy and administration have been tested and are available for general use.

DOWNLOADING TORRENT AND FILE SHARING


Users browse the web to find a torrent of interest, download it, and open it with a Bit Torrent client. The client connects to the tracker(s) specified in the torrent file, from which it receives a list of peers currently transferring pieces of the file(s) specified in the torrent. The client connects to those peers to obtain the various pieces. If the swarm Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, CDLU

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contains only the initial seeder, the client connects directly to it and begins to request pieces. Clients incorporate mechanisms to optimize their download and upload rates; for example they download pieces in a random order to increase the opportunity to exchange data, which is only possible if two peers have different pieces of the file. The effectiveness of this data exchange depends largely on the policies that clients use to determine to whom to send data. Clients may prefer to send data to peers that send data back to them, which encourages fair trading. But strict policies often result in suboptimal situations, such as when newly joined peers are unable to receive any data because they don't have any pieces yet to trade themselves or when two peers with a good connection between them do not exchange data simply because neither of them takes the initiative. To counter these effects, the official BitTorrent client program uses a mechanism called optimistic unchoking, whereby the client reserves a portion of its available bandwidth for sending pieces to random peers (not necessarily known good partners, so called preferred peers) in hopes of discovering even better partners and to ensure that newcomers get a chance to join the swarm. The community of BitTorrent users frowns upon the practice of disconnecting from the network immediately upon success of a file download, and encourages remaining as another seed for as long as practical, which may be days - especially when there are a lot of downloading peers and when the ratio of seeders to downloading peers is low.

How to Download Torrents


Find a torrent program that will suit your needs, the most common clients are uTorrent, Deluge, Vuze, BitTorrent, and Opera. Follow the instructions on downloading and installing your chosen client. Go to a torrent site and search for a file you want to download. Once you have found the desired file on the torrent site, click the "Download This Torrent" (or however they word it). it doesn't open that way, just save the .torrent file to an easy to locate place. The download will start automatically. Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, CDLU

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LIMITATIONS
Content unavailability Although swarming scales well to tolerate flash crowds for popular content, it is less useful for unpopular content. Peers arriving after the initial rush might find the content unavailable and need to wait for the arrival of a seed in order to complete their downloads. The seed arrival, in turn, may take long to happen, since maintaining seeds for unpopular content entails high bandwidth and administrative costs, which runs counter to the goals of publishers that value Bit Torrent as a cheap alternative to a clientserver approach. A strategy adopted by many publishers which significantly increases availability of unpopular content consists of bundling multiple files in a single swarm. Lack of anonymity BitTorrent does not offer its users anonymity. It is possible to obtain the IP addresses of all current, and possibly previous, participants in a swarm from the tracker. This may expose users with insecure systems to attacks. It may also expose users to the risk of being sued, if they are distributing files without permission from the copyright holder(s). However, there are ways to promote anonymity; for example, the OneSwarm project layers privacy-preserving sharing mechanisms on top of the original BitTorrent protocol. The leech problem A BitTorrent user may often choose to leave the swarm as soon as they have a complete copy of the file they are downloading, freeing up their outbound bandwidth for other uses. If enough users follow this pattern, torrent swarms gradually die out, meaning a lower possibility of obtaining older torrents. Some BitTorrent websites have attempted to address this by recording each user's download and upload ratio for all or just the user to see, as well as the provision of access to newer torrent files to people with better ratios. Users who have low upload ratios may see slower download speeds until they upload more. This prevents (statistical) leeching, since after a while they become unable to download at even a fraction of the theoretical bandwidth of their connection. Some trackers exempt dial-up users from this policy, because their uploading capabilities are limited. The Bit Torrent protocol also attempts to minimize the damages of leeches by Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, CDLU

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using only a portion of their bandwidth for one-directional trades and using the majority for two-directional trades that tend to help the swarm as a whole. The cheater problem There are "cheating" clients like BitThief which claim to be able to download without uploading. Such exploitation negatively affects the cooperative nature of the Bit Torrent protocol, although it might prove useful for people in countries where uploading copyrighted material is illegal, but downloading is not. Speed Average Bit Torrent download speed is usually the sum of that peer's upload speed and a fair share of the total upload of all the "seeders in the swarm" (peers logged with the tracker that have a complete copy of the file). The 'tit-for-tat' style file sharing of downloading peers is responsible for the portion of the available download that's the same as the peer's upload. The seeders attempt to provide fair shares by scattering pieces to a wide selection of the best performing peers. ISPs often provide asymmetrical Internet connections, with much higher download than upload speeds. Since a peer can only download data that's been uploaded by another peer this asymmetry is suboptimal for the bit torrent protocol. This performance issue is most obvious during the early life of a swarm when there is only one peer that is seeding (has a complete copy of the file) and all the other peers have exactly the same portion of the file as each other. When you initially join such a swarm you will get very high download speeds as every other peer optimistically sends you pieces in the hope that you have something to send them. This will probably continue until the time your peer catches up with the rest of the swarm when your average download speed drops to exactly the same as the upload speed of the seeder. The data is uploaded by the seeder to one peer and that peer passes it on down the line to the next in the swarm and so forth to everyone in the swarm. If all peers in the swarm have symmetrical connections the swarm becomes far more stable. During the initial startup the swarm will be less able to draw new arrivals to the current maximum level of the swarm so the "everybody becomes a seeder" threshold is much less of an instant switch and more of a controlled cascade. The balance between the Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, CDLU

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upload and the download also means that the majority of a peer's download is as a result of the 'tit-for-tat' file sharing which reduces the cost of seeding to a swarm by forcing the natural ratio of a peer closer to the overall 1:1 requirement of the swarm as a whole. If this reduction in 'seeder cost' were to happen in the wild it would probably result in much longer lived swarms too. As symmetrical connections are uncommon swarms are normally in the "seeder starved" state where there is very little seeder upload bandwidth available and each peer gets about the same download as its upload. Additional upload bandwidth can be made available to a swarm through the use of "seed boxes" and "http seeds" but this is quite rare with public torrents.

HOW TO CREATE A TORRENT Creating a torrent is very easy, and sharing in Torrent is more involved than with other p2p applications. This is the result of the protocol that makes this distribution system so efficient. Torrent shares content by breaking it up in small pieces and distributing them randomly between peers. Those peers then share these pieces with each other. This saves the seed the trouble of sending the same pieces over and over to different peers and enables all the peers in a swarm to participate to the distribution of the files regardless of their percentage of completion. Before you make a torrent, it would be wise to pick a site and review its policies and rules. Your site of choice may have restrictions about content; some do not allow porn, some specialize in specific type of content (such as music, or anime). And do not share an illegal content and content protected by copyright. Open Torrent Select File -> Create New Torrent, or alternatively select the Create New Torrent button To select a single file, select Add File. To select a folder containing files and folders, select Add Directory. Select the files or folders you wish to upload and press OK. In the Trackers box, add the address, in example: Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, CDLU

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Torrent http://tracker.boxtorrents.com:2710/announce.php Place a checkmark in the box that says Private torrent. 1 Select Create and Save as..., the .torrent file will be created. Select the destination you wish your file to be created in and click Save. You are done. You are now ready to offer to the tracker.

The torrent file youve made is available only when youre online, if youre offline, then your torrent will be not available. The tracker maintains lists of the clients currently participating in the torrent. Alternatively, in a trackerless system (decentralized tracking) every peer acts as a tracker. This is implemented by the Torrent, Torrent, BitComet, and KTorrent.

LEGAL ISSUES
There has been much controversy over the use of BitTorrent trackers. BitTorrent metafiles themselves do not store copyrighted data. Whether the publishers of BitTorrent metafiles violate copyrights by linking to copyrighted material is controversial. Various jurisdictions have pursued legal action against websites that host BitTorrent trackers. High-profile examples include the closing of Suprnova.org, Torrentspy, LokiTorrent, Demonoid, Mininova and OiNK.cd. The Pirate Bay torrent website, formed by a Swedish group, is noted for the "legal" section of its website in which letters and replies on the subject of alleged copyright infringements are publicly displayed. HBO, in an effort to combat the distribution of its programming on BitTorrent networks, has sent cease and desist letters to the Internet Service Providers of BitTorrent users. Many users have reported receiving letters from their ISPs that threatened to cut off their Internet service if the alleged infringement continues. HBO, unlike the RIAA, has not been reported to have filed suit against anyone for sharing files as of April 2007. In 2005 HBO began "poisoning" torrents of its show Rome, by providing bad chunks of data to clients. BitTorrent clients will eventually realize that the data is corrupted, but this does make it take longer to download. On 23 November 2005, the movie industry and BitTorrent Inc. CEO Bram Cohen, signed a deal they hoped would reduce the number of unlicensed copies available through Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, CDLU

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bittorrent.com's search engine, run by BitTorrent, Inc. It meant BitTorrent.com had to remove any links to unlicensed copies of films made by seven of Hollywood's major movie studios. More recently, the BitTorrent network has been subject to scrutiny by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). There are suggestions that they are using the network to obtain the IP addresses of those currently connected to the tracker. The information is then used to contact the ISP of each downloader so that notifications can be made (this was given sizeable coverage in the UK press with regard to Virgin Media sending letters out to customers suspected of using P2P networks). There are two major differences between BitTorrent and many other peer-to-peer filetrading systems, which advocates suggest make it less useful to those sharing copyrighted material without authorization. First, BitTorrent itself does not offer a search facility to find files by name. A user must find the initial torrent file by other means, such as a web search. Second, BitTorrent makes no attempt to conceal the host ultimately responsible for facilitating the sharing: a person who wishes to make a file available must run a tracker on a specific host or hosts and distribute the tracker address(es) in the .torrent file. Because it is possible to operate a tracker on a server that is located in a jurisdiction where the copyright holder cannot take legal action, the protocol does offer some vulnerability that other protocols lack. It is far easier to request that the server's ISP shut down the site than it is to find and identify every user sharing a file on a peer-to-peer network. However, with the use of a distributed hash table (DHT), trackers are no longer required, though often used for client software that does not support DHT to connect to the stream.

CONCLUSION
The Torrent protocol is the most efficient data sharing process. Because its easy, low cost, and not server-dependent. Relative to standard internet hosting, this provides a significant reduction in the original distributor's hardware and bandwidth resource costs. It also provides redundancy against system problems and reduces dependence on the original distributor. Torrent also allows clients to share their file, which in this case client act as a server. So the Torrent protocol allows multiple resource, and multiple file Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, CDLU

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download (in example people with FTP can only download a single file, while with torrent people can download multiple files). It can be useful because with more file resource thats published, means more speed to download. Its different with conventional FTP, when download process is always depended with server, and it doesnt support multiple file download, and multiple resource. Our BitTorrent Proxy allows administrators to control the Bit Torrent traffic in their networks. It allows organizations to mitigate the risks of inappropriate content and costly bandwidth usage to save money and promote productivity. At the same time, the proxy also benefits users inside and outside of the organization by providing access to torrents with legitimate content.

REFERENCES
http://www.google.com http://www.wikipedia.com http://www.torrent.eu http://www.youtube.com

Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, CDLU

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