Bit Torrents For Dummies

[Dubversion]

i know this has been done before, but i got to page 5 in the thread lists and couldn't see anything.. so could someone PLEASE - in simple, fucktard-friendly terms, explain what bit torrent is, and how to use it etc.

i really am a bit thick, you see

 

[stdPikachu]

Install BitTorrent client; my personal favourite for windows is YABC
Find a site with a .torrent on it
Open torrent in client
Bingo!

 

[Dubversion]

Install BitTorrent client; my personal favourite for windows is YABC
Find a site with a .torrent on it
Open torrent in client
Bingo!

it's not that simple.. i don't understand the very rudimentary stuff.. i have to be uploading to download, don't i?



i've found an online FAQ, i'll try that

 

[stdPikachu]

OK, I'll give you the more complicated version!

• The BitTorrent protocol rewards those who upload more with faster download bandwidth; hence it's pretty crap for leechers, which is always good

• If you're behind a router/NAT box, for the best speeds you'll need to open up/forward some ports to your workstation- namely ports in the 6881-6991 range or thereabouts. You'll need one port for every simultaneous download you want to do.

• I assume you know, but BT was designed for the mass distribution of files very quickly (primarily for Linux ISO's). It splits the files up into itty bitty chunks, which you download one by one from all the other people seeding that torrent. The BT client then reassembles the chunks in the right order to give you the complete file.

• Torrents require a tracker to keep a track of all the users currently seeding/downloading a torrent. The tracker is usually the same site you downloaded the .torrent from

• The .torrent file itself contains information about the file(s) you're downloading (namely the tracker address and the cryptographic hash of all the seperate chunk), and this is what kick-starts the download

 

[_pH_]

OK, I'll give you the more complicated version!

• The BitTorrent protocol rewards those who upload more with faster download bandwidth; hence it's pretty crap for leechers, which is always good

• If you're behind a router/NAT box, for the best speeds you'll need to open up/forward some ports to your workstation- namely ports in the 6881-6991 range or thereabouts. You'll need one port for every simultaneous download you want to do.

• I assume you know, but BT was designed for the mass distribution of files very quickly (primarily for Linux ISO's). It splits the files up into itty bitty chunks, which you download one by one from all the other people seeding that torrent. The BT client then reassembles the chunks in the right order to give you the complete file.

• Torrents require a tracker to keep a track of all the users currently seeding/downloading a torrent. The tracker is usually the same site you downloaded the .torrent from

• The .torrent file itself contains information about the file(s) you're downloading (namely the tracker address and the cryptographic hash of all the seperate chunk), and this is what kick-starts the download

And you think Dub's gonna understand what the fuck you're going on about? Cos I certainly don't!

 

[mwgdrwg]

google "Bit Torrent" - download and install the program, about 700k. There's no interfance or fancy icons whatsoever. It only kicks in when you get a something.torrent file.

go to websites like suprnova lite or slotorrent and download the appropriate file e.g. lesbianorgy.torrent

double-click on the torrent file (40k ish) and let the magic happen.

Basically everyone is downloading and uploading the same file at the same time. It takes a few minutes to connect to other sharers, and your download speed will increase as your upload amount increases.

 

[Dubversion]

how do i know which sites have the .torrent files i want? would i be going 'Hellboy.torrent' in google and then hoping for the rest?

sorry for being thick

 

[mwgdrwg]

how do i know which sites have the .torrent files i want? would i be going 'Hellboy.torrent' in google and then hoping for the rest?

sorry for being thick

Try searching for "hellboy torrent", or just go to
slotorrent and do a search.

As a coincidence I got Hellboy there. The xvid version is spot on. You may need to download the xvid codec to play it though.

 

[Dubversion]

excellent, thanks

and stdpikachu as well

 

[dogmatique]

Unfortunately not... it's not quite as easy to find torrent files as it is with kazaa and the like. You need to find reliable torrent sites...

by far the most popular is www.suprnova.org, which is pretty reliable and has the biggest catalogue of stuff out there.

A lot of the other sites are forum based, mostly using vbulletin like here - different sections like here, dedicated to different genres, software, music, films etc.

www.digital-update.com is an old standard, though it's sister site, which was really good for left-field music - www.hawkies-world.org recently shut down.

If you like seventies video nasties and old horror stuff there is no better place than http://crazymazey.kicks-ass.org/forum/ where you can find anything from old BBC horror stuff from the sixties, to extremly dodgy far east snuff / gore movies.

Torrent sites tend to be run by enthusiasts for particular genres - for example I came across a site the other day that was dedicated to mixes from BBC radio shows - i got some great stuff by Cinematic Orchestra and Quantic. BUT... It takes a bit of time and effort to find your favourite places, and as they are web-sites they are vulnerable to DNS and take-down attempts by "them" - so it can be a relatively transient experience.

By the same token, Torrent sites by their nature are run by people who want to spread good copies of good media, and is therefore less plagued by viruses and dodgy copies of films and music etc...

SO... if you find somewhere good... bookmark it. I hardly use anything other than BT these days, and I've found some fantastic music I would never have gone near if I hadn't been involved in a forum based swap-athon with like minded souls.

Bear with it, get it to work for you, and I promise you won't be disappointed.

 

[Dubversion]

excellent, i'll check all these out.

any hints on where i could find the original 60s Batman movie?

 

[MightyAphrodite]

http://yotoshi.com/


is the easiest search engine for torrents...

 

[Dubversion]

superb.




i'm starting to worry i might be too much of .. erm.. a ponce for bit torrent.

can't find any hal hartley movies (try searching for 'amateur' ) or La Dolce Vita by Fellini


but i have got Secretary on the way

 

[Sunray]

Dub, don't download the standard bit torrent client. Its shit. Use the ABC client which you download from here

http://pingpong-abc.sourceforge.net/

I've tried a few and this is by quite a considerable margin the best client I've tried.

I'm so gonna get this made as a sticky. I really am....

Bit torrent is a way of allowing lots of users access to single files without a single resource getting hit really hard. Imagine I have a file that 10000 people want, if they were all to try to get it off my machine, you can imagine that it'd take a while. What bit torrent does is to divide the files up into small chunks, imagine the file as a series of dominos. When you start downloading the client uses whats called the tracker to find out who has what bits (dominos) of the file. It will then access all the machines that have the information you need to construct the file effectively spreading the load across all the people that have downloaded and are currently downloading the file. Instead of hitting 1 machine for the file, you can potentially hit loads of machines, if they have a small upload speed (your download speed) thats OK, lots of small uploads can combine into quite an effective download speed for you. The more people that are downloading/seeding the better with bit torrent, it effectively adds all their upload speed (bandwidth) together.

Obviously if nobody has all the bits that make up the file, then you cant download that file. People that have the file in full are called 'seeds' and when you get your file, you should continue to allow it to be downloaded or 'seed' the file for some time so other people can get it and to spread the load. I use the ABC clients ratio settings to give 100% of what I take. I suggest this is a minimum.

The reason I recommend the ABC client is that the standard Bit torrent will always max out your upload bandwidth instantly, thus rendering the machine nearly incapable of browsing. ABC allows you to set the upload speed in K per second. It also aggregates this across all your downloads, so if you have 5 downloads it will spread the max bandwidth across all the downloads, allowing you to download a number of things at once.

You tend to find that it starts slow and builds up. Never got 2Mb out of it yet, but had 200Ks for Farscape whole 2nd series. 7Gb in way less than a day.

As mentioned www.suprnova.org is a gold mine of stuff.
www.uknova.com has loads of british TV

To download a file, you need to find the tracker for that file. Its appears as a standard web link, but clicking it will cause the bit torrent client to kick into action.

Finding the trackers isn't that hard, but there is no 'definitive' central resource of trackers, suprnova is a good one tho.

 

[diond]

Azureus is also another good client to use too. It's so easy even George W Bush could use it.

 

[MightyAphrodite]

i like torrent storm...its dead easy to use...you just save the bit torrent file to your desktop then when youve found all youre after drag and drop em into torrent storm and fire it up.

 

[maomao]

i'm starting to worry i might be too much of .. erm.. a ponce for bit torrent.

can't find any hal hartley movies (try searching for 'amateur' ) or La Dolce Vita by Fellini

Emule (kind of like a very anal version of kazaa) is very good for poncey shite. I just checked for la dolce vita, amateur and simple men and they were all there. Not as fast as a torrent on full throttle by any means but certainly less hassle for simultaneous downloads.

 

[dogmatique]

Just found this site: http://www.demonoid.com/ Not seen it before, but did come across the first 6 episodes of the new Hitchhikers... yeah, I know they've only broadcast 3 so far, so don't ask me how...

 

[Iam]

i like torrent storm...its dead easy to use...you just save the bit torrent file to your desktop then when youve found all youre after drag and drop em into torrent storm and fire it up.

I found that TorrentStorm has memory issues under Windows when you run it for a long time. It also uses it's own method of reporting which means that some (possibly quite a lot) trackers might have problems when it comes to ratios if you're using that (and a few other) clients.

Azureus is the business.

I'll add

http://www.tvtorrents.net for all your US TV watching needs, and Dub mate... You might want to get yourself over to http://www.sharingthegroove.org/ and check out their range of bootlegs and non-released music. They don't do MP3s (FLAC & SHN), but when you see what they've got, you might want to get yourself the plugins... It's a forum site, so it needs registration, but it's worth it.

Also, http://www.torrentreactor.net/index.php is a dump site, a bit like suprnova, but less extensive.

 

[Dubversion]

The reason I recommend the ABC client is that the standard Bit torrent will always max out your upload bandwidth instantly, thus rendering the machine nearly incapable of browsing. .

you're not kidding - was downloading two movies and my browser was taking 45 seconds between pages

so i'll try the ABC one instead.. i don't suppose it will be able to pick up the two movies i aborted?

 

[Iam]

If you have kept the torrent files and you use the same "save to" directories, you should be able to resume them.

 

[Dubversion]

If you have kept the torrent files and you use the same "save to" directories, you should be able to resume them.

excellent

 

[maes]

Yeah torrent is great for getting the lastest divx films or whatever, but shite for finding obscure music & films - you can only download what some other bod deems worthy. Having said that, the standard of stuff is pretty reliable (eg. no god awful tele-synch "divxs" or incredibly fuzzy mp3s - they are generally ripped by the person who puts them on the site)

www.torrentbits.org is a great little site, but they are v strict membership only & there are only windows every month or so when you can register. You also have to maintain a really high upload/download ratio. but if you can do that you can get some decent stuff, well before it comes out on other networks.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

getting non mainstream stuff can be difficult but if you find a good site you can get some great stuff


i get most of my stuff from just 3 sites

 

[kenny g]

Something I posted a while back..


Increasingly popular over the last couple of years, Bit torrent has taken the file sharing scene by storm. It's ease of use and ability to rapidly distribute new files to many users has put even the heydays of the fast track network to shame. Never before have so many people had access to files on a 0 day basis. As soon as they have been cracked or ripped they become spread across the BT sites . Whereas it used to take up to a week for files to become widely available now I can be downloading a couple of hours after their information has been posted on the net. This is useful not only for movie addicts but also for people who want to watch the latest TV episodes. The recent AliG series shown in the states, for example, was available for download within hours of broadcast.
There are a multitude of BT clients since it is an open source protocol, Azureus is one that works very well for many people. http://azureus.sourceforge.net/ You need to download Java for it to work but it is all pretty straightforward.
If you want to use BT you will need to access some sites from which you can download torrents, very small files which connect you to a tracker which organises your downloading and uploading of the file.
The most famous torrent site is www.suprnova.org [DO NOT download from pop ups] but there are plenty of others ... www.btsites.tk has a giant list .
Plenty of site requires registration to view the torrents and some require you to upload a certain amount to avoid a waiting period to access the latest torrents. The advantage of such sites is that generally the downloads are faster than elsewhere. I got a copy of I- robot in 45 minutes this morning from one such site.
I recommend www.torrentbits.org for 0 hour latest releases.. the membership is limited to 100,000 but members are culled every day so keep checking .
For dvdrs www.dvdr-core.org is good - I'm still on a 12 hour waiting period over there , you have to upload 30 GBs before you have access to the latest torrents.
For Uk stuff www.uknova.com works well.
And, last but not least www.mvgroup.org is easily the leader in the documentary field .

A good FAQ is at:-

http://dessent.net/btfaq

A good guide is at:-

http://www.slyck.com/bt.php

 

[mwgdrwg]

getting non mainstream stuff can be difficult but if you find a good site you can get some great stuff


i get most of my stuff from just 3 sites

share the knowledge dude.

Is one of them Lunar?

 

[Sunray]

Azureus is also another good client to use too. It's so easy even George W Bush could use it.

Thats why I didn't want it, it requires JVM and I can't be dealing with that.

 

[diond]

Thats why I didn't want it, it requires JVM and I can't be dealing with that.

Why, out of interest?

 

[Sunray]

Don't like the look of java apps, slightly non-windows look and feel.

The abc client is a win32 bin so I don't need it and that client does all I need so I don't need it.

 

[tom k&e]

http://www.empornium.us is good for, well, porn.