This means that, in effect, the more people that participate at the same time, the faster the transfer speeds will likely be. Compared to other P2P platforms, this system creates a network between all the users seeking to download a file, rather than simply connecting one user with none of the file to another with all of it.

As soon as you have downloaded fragments of files, these are immediately available and are redistributed to all of the other users seeking to download that file who do not have the packets that you do. The more users “distribute” on a BitTorrent network, the more each will receive. You can pause and resume the download at any time – presuming that there are still people sharing the file, of course.

This system would, in an ideal world, be used purely for legitimate purposes. Instead BitTorrent has become synonymous with internet piracy, but for those considering using it for this purpose, a warning: If you get involved in the sharing of illegal files, you must know that your IP address is passed on to all the other peers on the network. One popular site for sharing copyrighted content is currently fighting a legal battle to prevent it having to turn over its logs of users IP addresses to the authorities.

The BitTorrent vocabulary

There are certain terms specific to the use of BitTorrent. If you look for forums or specialised sites, you will most likely come across this vocabulary.

Here is a smattering of the definitions you’ll need to know:

- Leecher: A client wishing to download the file..

- Peer: A user connected who is capable of transferring all or part of a file

- Seed: A client that has downloaded the whole file and is sharing it with other users.

- Share Ratio: This is the ratio between the upload (data shared) and the download. The higher the number of “seeds” relative to “leechers” the better the share ratio. A torrent with a good share ratio is often termed “Healthy”.

- Torrent: A .torrent file that contains all the data relative to the files that it then renders downloadable: name, size, IP address of a server centralising the data relative to the peers.

- Tracker: A server that records the ensemble of the seeds and peers. It is also the point of exchange of information between the different clients connected. Warning, this server does not contain the files to be downloaded, it simply manages the data relative to the users participating in the exchange.