A Mac Mini Enthusiast Network

Downloading torrents seems a simple and intuitive process to the casual user: the double click the file to open it in a BitTorrent client and the file slowly appears. The technology behind this simple process is, however, a little more involved.

The actual files that torrents come packaged in – usually identified with a .torrent suffix – do not contain anything other than information about the downloads. They certainly don’t contain the files themselves. When you open torrents in the client it contacts an online ‘tracker’ to ask where it should look for these files. The tracker then provides to the client a list of the peers (other computers) that have the files (or some parts of the files) specified in the torrents.

Once the torrents’ files are located, downloading can begin. Sections of the files are treated individually: your client may download the last part of an MP3 track first. Once you have a section of the file on your computer it becomes available to other computers who are looking for this torrents’ files.

Torrents and P2P file downloads may be an accept part of modern life, but the technology behind them is novel and interesting.