Another popular P2P file sharing system, BitTorrent was designed around the turn of the century for large amounts of data to be distributed in a wide disbursement without the original distributor having to bear the burden of cost for hardware, hosting, and bandwidth.

In order to download a torrent file, you must first locate one. When you do, you open it using a BitTorrent client program which connects the tracker to the specified torrent file. The file is then sent to a list of peers which download pieces of the file you’re trying to download. The client (you) connect to those disparate peers and download the individual pieces of the file; this is what’s known in torrent language as a “swarm.” When the swarm is only the original sender, the client will connect directly to them but still request the file in pieces.

Clients are able to use different techniques in your search and download of torrent files on BitTorrent. One thing you may do as a client is request pieces of the swarm in random order which increases your opportunity to exchange data if more than one other peer is involved.

While clients may prefer to send data to peers who offer data back, there are policies in place that make this prohibitive. For example, as a new user, you may be unable to receive any data because you don’t have any to give. Though there is a practice called “optimistic unchoking” whereby the client reserves a portion of what’s available to send out to random peers in the hope of discovering newer, better partners and allowing those newcomers a chance to thrive.

This is a free bit of BitTorrent; though I wouldn’t count on the free stuff to continue to come your way; especially if you’re a deadbeat and an inactive peer on your own end.

BitTorrent is a big fan of movies on their site as movies are some of the biggest files to swap and BitTorrent is one of the largest large file sites anywhere.

If you’re looking for BitTorrent software a good idea would be to prowl around the internet. BitTorrent, so far as I could tell, is a free platform from which you can feel free to operate but you need to sign up as a BitTorrent client to begin with and then you do need to continue to participate or you may just get left out in the cold.