Bit Torrent A good or a bad?

Common methods of transferring files in the internet: Client-Server Model Peer-to-Peer Network

What is a Client Server Model It represents a central server sending a whole file which clients are requesting for. (Connecting one-to-one directly) Files (Data) are primarily stored at server Clients won’t speak to each other except the server. It is a many (clients) to one (server) relationship HTTP & FTP are examples

Advantage(s): Easy to set up Disadvantage(s): Large amount of bandwidth and server resources to distribute a file, especially those very popular and large in size. Usually time consuming as there is a long queue that users have to wait through. Once the server is down, operations will cease across the network.

What is Peer-to-peer network It is a network without any file server or a centralized management source. All computers are considered equal; they all can share files without accessing to a server It is relatively faster than Client Server Model as clients can download a single file from multiple sources.

What is Bit Torrent (BT) It is a protocol designed for transferring files. It is a many (clients) to many (clients) relationship It is actually a “combination” of Peer to Peer Network and Client Server Model

Major terms in Bit Torrent Torrent – It is a small metadata file you receive from the web server (the one that ends in.torrent.) Metadata - It means the file contains information about the data you want to download, not the data itself. Seed - A complete copy of a certain torrent Tracker - A server which coordinate the action of BitTorrent clients.

How BT works After BT users download a.torrent file, they can start downloading files. While they are downloading, they are uploading them (act as a seed) at the same time. A tracker coordinates the action of all such peers. It only manages connections and therefore a large number of users can be supported with relatively limited tracker bandwidth.

Some Advantages of using BT As users upload and download at the same time, network bandwidth can be utilized very efficiently. The more users downloading, the faster the download rate is. If there are more than 1 seed, even 1 of them is not functioned well, the download process of other users will not stopped.

Some Disadvantages of using BT Give rise to illicit downloads Causing huge loss to authentic products sellers

Action done to deal with the problem TECHNOLOGY; In Hong Kong, a Jail Sentence for Online File-Sharing “A Hong Kong judge sentenced a 38-year- old unemployed man to three months in jail Monday for using an Internet file-sharing system to make three Hollywood movies available for others to download free. The jail sentence was the first ever meted out against a person copying movies using the BitTorrent” (extracted from NEW YORK TIMES)

Conclusion BT makes used of the technology of p2p to let other users to download files from different peers (users) instead of downloading from the main server only. It is stable and fast. If it is misused as a source to do any illegal activities, then it should be carefully monitored by the government

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