Hey everyone! I saw the comments and they were all very helpful. I just had no idea how torrents worked lol. I will be sure to do my part and I hope anyone with similar curiosity can also benefit from this post! Feel free to say your piece but note that I get the gist of it now.
this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2024
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If you have slower internet or don't seed 24/7, I would recommend just focusing on seediing torrents with a low number of seeders. It doesn't really matter if you leech the latest episode of a popular new TV series, as there will be so many other seeders, (many with a better capacity to seed). However, for something older or more niche your decision to seed or leech could determine whether someone else gets to enjoy that content.
With a traditional download, examplesite.com sends a file to your computer, that's it.
With torrents, instead of that you download little pieces of the file from many different computers. Sometimes hundreds of different computers. Then once you've downloaded the file you can then start sharing pieces to other people downloading. The more people doing this, the faster the downloads will be for everyone else and the less strain it will put on each computer's Internet connection.
Also if not many people are seeding, there's a danger that the file will have 0 seeders and nobody can download it at all.
This is also why torrenting is good for privacy. Shutting down one website isn't so hard. Shutting down hundreds of random personally owned computers is very hard.
Torrents are P2P. You are downloading from other people who are seeding. If no one seeds, there's nothing to download. Simple as that. Etiquette dictates you should seed more than you download to ensure the network stays lively.
So even if no one directly connects to my computer, just letting it seed is all you need? I use Deluge and, when it finishes downloading, it says "seeding" but I worry that means that someone can connect to my computer directly. Does it work fine if I just leave it be?
the reason you were able to download it is because other people were seeding it. that's why seeding is helpful
I worry that means that someone can connect to my computer directly.
That's how torrents work. Everytime you're downloading so.ething you're connecting to other people's computers and letting other people connect to yours.
Kinda just how the Internet works in general, really. Just distributed vs centralized
They don't connect to your computer like you're thinking. There is a connection, yes, just like when you're downloading you connect to other people's computers. You can see them in the peer list.
Oh that's what that is! I kept seeing that but it didn't really click. Thanks!
Person 1 has file A, which person 2 wants to download. Person 2 connects to person 1 and starts to download which makes person 1 a seeder. If person 1 has file A but doesn't seed, person 2 can't download file A since there is no seeder.
When you seed you make sure that others can download that same file, but yes, they establish a connection with you to download it. If I have understood it correctly.
Bittorrent is a file sharing protocol, which isn't inherently dangerous. The 'torrent' contains the information that's being passed around to allow connectivity to that particular file. This is also not inherently dangerous as that information is very specific and limited... and doesn't allow any other user to browse the rest of your computer.
What may be dangerous is downloading a file that contains malware or viruses via a torrent. Use reputable sites and keep your security software up to date. Better yet, use a different computer for this activity with a vpn.
Also potential security vulnerabilities in the torrent client. But that's uncommon and they fix them as they're found.
You downloaded that torrent from seeds. If you don't seed, you're just a leech. Do you like leeches in real life?
When you download a torrent, you're downloading it from someone else's computer. That 'someone else' is usually an individual, not some file sharing site with redundant servers.
When you download a torrent, someone had to send it. It's a small cost for individual torrents, but they had to pay for energy, internet connection, hard drives etc. If more people seed the torrent, you get a small bit of it from each seed, spreading the burden.
If no-one with the torrent has their computer on and seeding it, you cannot download the file, because there is no-one to download it from. If there are several seeds with the torrent, then you can still download it even if one or more seeds turn the computer off at night, delete the file, or are overloaded.
Please just make sure you use a VPN, if your understanding of the technology is so limited.
Share share ratios:
18.78
7.09 global but I do have a few files with over a 30 ratio
It’s basically like a room full of people with USB sticks. If you are just taking all of their USB sticks to download data off of, but you don’t put your data back on the USB sticks to share them with others, you’ll get kicked out of the part for being a jerk. It’s the same with torrents.
They are not the classic client-server thing that the web usually is. There isn’t a big server you are downloading from, it’s just other people that are seeding the torrent. So it’s common courtesy to do the same to allow more people to download it.
That’s the beauty of torrents. With servers, you just have to tell the owner to take the file down. With torrents, you’ll have to find every person that currently has the file and seeds it to take it fully offline. So yes, this exposes you to some risks. If you are downloading pirated content and live in a country where these laws are enforced, you’ll want to use a VPN to torrent. But with seeding, you’re giving back to the community that you’re taking from.
This actually explained it so much. I kept thinking in the normal web hosting way. I had no idea the internet was this easy. Torrents are really cool! I am sure to share ALL my USB sticks! Even the ones I don't use.
better to keep track of a ton of torrents and seed the ones that go completely dead
I am keeping some torrents alive and have mad seed ratios on some of them. If it goes under five seeds and I've downloaded it.
To OP, the more seeds a torrent has, the easier it is for everyone to download it, and the less each seeder has to contribute. Think of it as a sort of giving back to the community.
Obviously, the latest episode of popular TV show doesn't need your help, but obscure bits of media can actually die out. Or stuck at the same 40% for months.
Since the files are just kept on everyone's computer, if no one has that file while online, no one can download it. No central file repository.
What are ratios?
How much you've downloaded compared to how much you've uploaded. If it's equal, it's 1.0. If you've uploaded twice as much as you've downloaded, it's 2.0.
Mid-hundreds. idk, way higher than I was getting for forgetting to delete random game of thrones episodes
This is a much more involved method than just seeding everything you download to at least a 1.0 ratio, but if you're extremely resource-limited, then sure