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.

Downloading with a torrent is advantageous especially when downloading files, which are momentarily very popular and whitch lots of people are downloading. Because the more people download the file, the higher speed for everyone.
So finally we can say
* torrent is a file
* with torrents you can download almost everything on the net
* every file (or set of files) need to have an unique torrent file to download it
* to download anything through a torrent you need a torrent client.

Answered by Nagendra , an ibibo Master, at 8:08 AM on May 01, 2008

well OM, Torrents, typically ending in ".torrent", are control files for the peer-to-peer file sharing technology called BitTorrent.

It's actually pretty cool technology that really just boils down to another way to download files. So really, you just use .torrent files to download other files.

BitTorrent is a distributed file distribution technology. Yes, "distributed distribution". When you download a file using BitTorrent, the file is actually broken up into chunks, that you BitTorrent client program then downloads and reassembled into the final file as the pieces arrive. To over-simplify, what makes it interesting are two things:

*

The different chunks you download can all be coming from different machines. A BitTorrent client will connect to many other BitTorrent clients and download several chunks at once, in random order. In the long run this makes the protocol fairly efficient, and very nicely scalable - the more BitTorrent clients that are serving up a given file, the faster other clients can download it.
*

As you start collecting chunks of the file your BitTorrent client will start making those chunks available for downloading to other BitTorrent clients, and will become a part of the peer-to-peer file distribution network.

The ".torrent" file is simply the bootstrap for this whole process. You download that normally, for example in your web browser, and then it is read by your BitTorrent client. It has the information that the BitTorrent client then uses to begin to locate other BitTorrent clients that are serving up the file you're interested in.

"Torrent" is sometimes used to refer to the file being shared using BitTorrent, but a ".torrent" file is a specific file with specific information that is used to bootstrap the file download.

Note I haven't talked at all about what kinds of files are actually being downloaded. That's because the answer is "any". Typically the types of files being shared using BitTorrent are large - audio files, video files and programs. But just saying "a torrent" doesn't tell you what it is or what you can do with it.

Let's get concrete. Let's say you've discovered that some "Public Domain Movie" is available via a torrent. You download the ".torrent" file, and open it in your BitTorrent client. It then goes out to the internet, locates other BitTorrent clients that are serving up that file, and begins downloading all the various chunks until it has a complete copy of the file. When it's all done, you'll end up with something like a "PublicDomainMovie.avi" file. Or ".mpg", ".mov" or something else. What you then do with that file is up to you. Yep, you could burn that file to a CD or DVD, but that's all something you would do after it's downloaded, and has nothing to do with the fact that you got it via BitTorrent.

Source Site: http://ask-leo.com/whats_a_tor rent.html

Answered by Saurabh , an ibibo Master, at 8:40 PM on April 29, 2008

The different chunks you download can all be coming from different machines. A BitTorrent client will connect to many other BitTorrent clients and download several chunks at once, in random order. In the long run this makes the protocol fairly efficient, and very nicely scalable - the more BitTorrent clients that are serving up a given file, the faster other clients can download it.

Answered by Archit , an ibibo Advisor, at 11:34 AM on April 27, 2008

torrent file is the link for download the files,it just hv the seeders address

Answered by Shaz Waz , an ibibo Citizen, at 11:34 AM on April 26, 2008

It's actually pretty cool technology that really just boils down to another way to download files. So really, you just use .torrent files to download other files.
BitTorrent is a distributed file distribution technology. Yes, "distributed distribution". When you download a file using BitTorrent, the file is actually broken up into chunks, that you BitTorrent client program then downloads and reassembled into the final file as the pieces arrive. To over-simplify, what makes it interesting are two things:

The different chunks you download can all be coming from different machines. A BitTorrent client will connect to many other BitTorrent clients and download several chunks at once, in random order. In the long run this makes the protocol fairly efficient, and very nicely scalable - the more BitTorrent clients that are serving up a given file, the faster other clients can download it.

As you start collecting chunks of the file your BitTorrent client will start making those chunks available for downloading to other BitTorrent clients, and will become a part of the peer-to-peer file distribution network.

The ".torrent" file is simply the bootstrap for this whole process. You download that normally, for example in your web browser, and then it is read by your BitTorrent client. It has the information that the BitTorrent client then uses to begin to locate other BitTorrent clients that are serving up the file you're interested in.

"Torrent" is sometimes used to refer to the file being shared using BitTorrent, but a ".torrent" file is a specific file with specific information that is used to bootstrap the file download.

Note I haven't talked at all about what kinds of files are actually being downloaded. That's because the answer is "any". Typically the types of files being shared using BitTorrent are large - audio files, video files and programs. But just saying "a torrent" doesn't tell you what it is or what you can do with it.

Let's get concrete. Let's say you've discovered that some "Public Domain Movie" is available via a torrent. You download the ".torrent" file, and open it in your BitTorrent client. It then goes out to the internet, locates other BitTorrent clients that are serving up that file, and begins downloading all the various chunks until it has a complete copy of the file. When it's all done, you'll end up with something like a "PublicDomainMovie.avi" file. Or ".mpg", ".mov" or something else. What you then do with that file is up to you. Yep, you could burn that file to a CD or DVD, but that's all something you would do after it's downloaded, and has nothing to do with the fact that you got it via BitTorrent.

I don't have a tremendous amount of experience with BitTorrent clients, so I can't really recommend one over the other, but I have used Azureus successfully, and it seems to be one of the more popular BitTorrent clients. I will warn you that all of the BitTorrent clients I've seen to date are still in the "geeky" stage, meaning that they sort of assume you know what you're doing to begin with. It's not a steep learning curve, but it will seem pretty obscure at first.


source

http://ask-leo.com/whats_a _torrent. html

Answered by Smarty , an ibibo Master, at 10:50 PM on April 25, 2008

Torrents, typically ending in ".torrent", are control files for the peer-to-peer file sharing technology called BitTorrent.

It's actually pretty cool technology that really just boils down to another way to download files. So really, you just use .torrent files to download other files.

BitTorrent is a distributed file distribution technology. Yes, "distributed distribution". When you download a file using BitTorrent, the file is actually broken up into chunks, that you BitTorrent client program then downloads and reassembled into the final file as the pieces arrive. To over-simplify, what makes it interesting are two things:
* The different chunks you download can all be coming from different machines. A BitTorrent client will connect to many other BitTorrent clients and download several chunks at once, in random order. In the long run this makes the protocol fairly efficient, and very nicely scalable - the more BitTorrent clients that are serving up a given file, the faster other clients can download it.
* As you start collecting chunks of the file your BitTorrent client will start making those chunks available for downloading to other BitTorrent clients, and will become a part of the peer-to-peer file distribution network.

The ".torrent" file is simply the bootstrap for this whole process. You download that normally, for example in your web browser, and then it is read by your BitTorrent client. It has the information that the BitTorrent client then uses to begin to locate other BitTorrent clients that are serving up the file you're interested in.

Answered by Bishan Preet , an ibibo Specialist, at 5:26 PM on April 25, 2008

hi om it is Torrents, typically ending in ".torrent", are control files for the peer-to-peer file sharing technology called BitTorrent.

It's actually pretty cool technology that really just boils down to another way to download files. So really, you just use .torrent files to download other files.
BitTorrent is a distributed file distribution technology. Yes, "distributed distribution". When you download a file using BitTorrent, the file is actually broken up into chunks, that you BitTorrent client program then downloads and reassembled into the final file as the pieces arrive. To over-simplify, what makes it interesting are two things:

The different chunks you download can all be coming from different machines. A BitTorrent client will connect to many other BitTorrent clients and download several chunks at once, in random order. In the long run this makes the protocol fairly efficient, and very nicely scalable - the more BitTorrent clients that are serving up a given file, the faster other clients can download it.

As you start collecting chunks of the file your BitTorrent client will start making those chunks available for downloading to other BitTorrent clients, and will become a part of the peer-to-peer file distribution network.

The ".torrent" file is simply the bootstrap for this whole process. You download that normally, for example in your web browser, and then it is read by your BitTorrent client. It has the information that the BitTorrent client then uses to begin to locate other BitTorrent clients that are serving up the file you're interested in.

"Torrent" is sometimes used to refer to the file being shared using BitTorrent, but a ".torrent" file is a specific file with specific information that is used to bootstrap the file download.

Note I haven't talked at all about what kinds of files are actually being downloaded. That's because the answer is "any". Typically the types of files being shared using BitTorrent are large - audio files, video files and programs. But just saying "a torrent" doesn't tell you what it is or what you can do with it.

Let's get concrete. Let's say you've discovered that some "Public Domain Movie" is available via a torrent. You download the ".torrent" file, and open it in your BitTorrent client. It then goes out to the internet, locates other BitTorrent clients that are serving up that file, and begins downloading all the various chunks until it has a complete copy of the file. When it's all done, you'll end up with something like a "PublicDomainMovie.avi" file. Or ".mpg", ".mov" or something else. What you then do with that file is up to you. Yep, you could burn that file to a CD or DVD, but that's all something you would do after it's downloaded, and has nothing to do with the fact that you got it via BitTorrent.

I don't have a tremendous amount of experience with BitTorrent clients, so I can't really recommend one over the other, but I have used Azureus successfully, and it seems to be one of the more popular BitTorrent clients. I will warn you that all of the BitTorrent clients I've seen to date are still in the "geeky" stage, meaning that they sort of assume you know what you're doing to begin with. It's not a steep learning curve, but it will seem pretty obscure at first.

for more inf check source http://ask-leo.com/whats_a_torrent. html

Answered by raj u , an ibibo Master, at 2:33 PM on April 25, 2008

.torrent, a file extension used by a BitTorrent client or other peer-to-peer programs that use the BitTorrent protocol.

Answered by Hem@nt , an ibibo Master, at 10:37 AM on April 25, 2008

well om,
.torrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P) communications protocol. BitTorrent is a method of distributing large amounts of data widely without the original distributor incurring the entire costs of hardware, hosting, and bandwidth resources. Instead, when data is distributed using the BitTorrent protocol, each recipient supplies pieces of the data to newer recipients, reducing the cost and burden on any given individual source, providing redundancy against system problems, and reducing dependence on the original distributor.

The protocol is the brainchild of programmer Bram Cohen, who designed it in April 2001 and released a first implementation on 2 July 2001. It is now maintained by Cohen's company BitTorrent, Inc.

Usage of the protocol accounts for significant traffic on the Internet, but the precise amount has proven difficult to measure.

There are numerous compatible BitTorrent clients, written in a variety of programming languages, and running on a variety of computing platforms.

Answered by Nz , an ibibo Master, at 2:03 AM on April 25, 2008