Over the past few years, humanity
is trying to create a system to fasten the transfer process of large amount of data
over the internet. Starts from regular download or so-called mirror download
which is so much wasting time in transferring a large amount of data. After a
few years passed, they found out a way to overcome the problem (distributing a
large amount of data) by dividing the data into small parts. But after all, the
systems still have a drawback, which is if the server receiving too much
requests from a lot of clients, then the server will be down and cause the
download process will be inherited or even canceled. Eventually, they have successfully
overcome the problem by introducing Torrent.
Introduction to torrent:
Torrent was first introduced to world in 2001 by a man named Bram Cohen who
now owns BitTorrent.inc Company. BitTorrent is a network and software that
enables transmission of data in a peer-to-peer (no server). BitTorrent is
one of the most common protocols for transferring large files, and peer-to-peer
networks have been estimated to collectively account for approximately 43% to
70% of all Internet traffic.
How torrent
works?
In the torrent, there is known as “seed”. Seed
is a user or computer that owns a file and the file can be downloaded. While there
is known as “leech”. Leech is a user or computer that request for a file or
want to download a file. After the leech has finished downloading the file, the
leech role is changing to the seed.
Difference
between regular & torrent download:
The problem with many “traditional”
peer-to-peer file sharing protocols is that most users have different speeds
downlink and uplink. This means that even though a user has plenty of bandwidth
downlink, the speed of a file transfer to him will be restricted by a much
smaller bandwidth uplink from the user he downloads from. Let us take a simple
example: assume that a user wants to download a file from another user. Assume
that they both have the same connection; 5 Mbps for downlink and 1Mbps for
uplink. It means, the speed of the transfer between the two users is determined
by the uplink which is only 1Mbps, the downlink is obeyed. Not to mention in reality,
most users have only an uplink far below than 1Mbps. While using BitTorrent, this
problem is solved by splitting files into smaller pieces. When requesting a
file, the user’s computer looks around on internet for other people that having
one or more pieces of the wanted file. He then downloads different parts of the
file from different users at the same time resulting files arrives many times
faster as compared to downloading from just one user.
Is it
Legal?
The first thing that comes to our mind when we
hear torrent downloading is piracy or illegal distribution. It is not
unreasonable, since the majority of traffic is illegal exchange of copyrighted
material. Apparently, BitTorrent protocol has feature which makes it usable for
totally legitimate purposes. The simple case is like in America where as the
residence you can legally own a gun for recreational target practice and
hunting, but also you own it to rob a bank which makes you guilty for it and
illegal. It’s the same with BitTorrent, is a perfectly legitimate technology,
it’s simply a matter of what you use it for that makes it legal or illegal.
Advantages
:
By downloading from the torrent file and
software, the file can be downloaded from many sources that are not fixated on
a single source such as how regular download.
Files can also be downloaded gradually, so that
the leecher doesn’t have to worry about his computer keep turned on all day
until the file has successfully downloaded. Stop anywhere and anytime but still
won’t damaged the downloaded file. It is very suitable for users that have slow
internet connection.
Another plus is that the downloaded file
with a torrent is not too consuming CPU Usage.
Disadvantages:
Downloading
by using torrent is potentially dangerous, because your IP Address is shown to
other people and because of that, they can do tracking to your browser’s
history and can get your personal information from it.
Files from torrent are apparently a file that owned from another user, so
it means they’re not original from the company’s official creator media.
The Files from torrent can be a fake file with the right name. In example,
if you want to look for a song in the torrent, you would search for the title of
the song. In this case, after you found the torrent file that has the same name
with the song title you’re looking for, the content might not be the same. It
might be another song or might be a potentially dangerous application that
people spreads over internet.
The viruses and Trojans from torrent are easily and rapidly spread. The file
purity from the torrent cannot be guaranteed. Just don’t forget to keep your
antivirus on and up-to-date.
Profit of BitTorrent
“Our main source of revenue is off the
toolbars we push out, which isn't a great source of monetization, but it's
something. You can do the math on how many installs we have and what the
monetization of toolbars is, and subtract out the costs of having 50 employees,
and you'll get a reasonable ballpark of how profitable we are, although the
short answer is very. Even lousy monetization works well when you have more
users than Twitter.” said Bram Cohen, the inventor of BitTorent itself.
So we
can say that, the BitTorrent get its profit from the advertisements that they authorized
on their apps and at the same time they charge the advertiser for these.
Improvement:
As a user of BitTorent, I think
the features they offer is already satisfied me enough. So far, I haven’t found
any bug on this app. I also haven’t found any fake file with the same name I looking
for. My computer never got infected by any virus or Trojan. And last but not
least, even with the slow internet speed, I still can download a file with high
speed.
In conclusion, torrent has overcome
the problem to transfer a large amount of data in a small amount of time. And so
far, I feel satisfied for using BitTorrent and I also conclude BitTorrent saved
me a lot amount of time compared with another apps for downloading. My
suggestion when before you want to download a torrent file, you should see the seeders
reputation and the comment from other user in the post. This needs to be done in
order to avoid getting a fake file.
Reference:
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