BitTorrent is a protocol for decentralized (peer-to-peer) file sharing that’s been around for ages. It’s probably most well-known for its use in sharing proprietary media (movies, etc.) but is used for plenty of copyleft and public domain media as well.
One of the cool features of Internet Archive is it automatically generates a .torrent file for each item on the site, meaning even if Internet Archive gets completely annihilated, items with enough seeders (people uploading a certain file or set of files on the BitTorrent network) are practically impossible to take down.
Download a BitTorrent Client
Using BitTorrent is fairly simple, you just need a client such as qBittorrent or Transmission (beware of crappy proprietary clients like μTorrent). qBittorrent is more advanced; Transmission is more newbie-friendly. Once installed, simply download the .torrent file and open it in the client. You’ll then be prompted to choose a location to download to—make sure you have enough space on your disk! Some sites instead provide magnet links: these look like magnet:?xt=urn:btih:f92c877e... (truncated) and are supported by clients as an alternative to .torrent files.
If all goes well the torrent will start downloading. The speed at which a torrent downloads is proportional to its size divided by the number of seeders. Once downloaded, your client should automatically start seeding, that is uploading to others who are downloading.
Troubleshooting
There are a number of reasons a torrent may not work, and this is not an exhaustive list, but here are some common issues you may run into:
- No one seeding: A torrent can’t be downloaded unless there are others uploading. The number of uploaders is the first shown in the
Seeds column of qBittorrent’s file list or the first number in the Downloading from.. text in Transmission. If this number is zero, you’ll need to wait for someone to start uploading.
- Port forwarding: You may need to configure port forwarding or UPnP on your router/firewall. There are many guides online depending on your model.
- ISP blocking: Because BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer protocols can be used to share proprietary media, some ISPs may block this type of traffic altogether. In this case you’ll need to use a VPN (see below).
VPNs and Torrent Privacy
Because BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer protocol it requires opening ports and exposes your IP address. While typically not a security issue, you may want to use a VPN to avoid doing this directly on your home network. Additionally a VPN can be used to solve both the port forwarding and ISP blocking issues.
A VPN is just a server that relays internet traffic from your computer to a server through an encrypted “tunnel”. Personally I use Mullvad since it’s considered one of the most reputable, but there are plenty of other options out there—do some research, beware of marketing claims and remember nothing is truly free.
Hopefully this is a helpful guide to getting started with torrenting. Please give me your feedback or anything you’d like to add in the comments, and happy seeding!
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Thanks for the incredible explanation - that will help, for sure!
We’re working on it something with torrenting: Sciop - Bittorrent feed aggregator
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