Peer-to-Peer - Downloading
P2P is really more of a network structure, or rather, a protocol than it is a tool or service, but often that’s what people see it as. When people think of all the programs they use to download files, they usually don’t associate that beneath the hood, most of what people use is all under the same concept or service: P2P. Though this is not always the case, as there are others out there like Usenet, which we’ll talk about in another series.
Search Engines
While software that uses Gnutella often includes it’s own search feature, most people that use BitTorrent use search engine’s to find content as well as read the comments about what they’re wanting to download to see other questions, opinions, etc. Here is a small list of some of the best search engines:
The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay is one of the most known trackers/search engines. It’s also currently one of the best. The reason TPB stands out among the rest is the fact that it has such a dedicated community. When you visit torrents found on TPB, you often find that there are plenty of good comments either asking questions that you may have had or making suggestions, etc. TPB is generally my first place to look. Why? Because I consider them “trusted”. They even have icons next to the name of the members so you can tell who is good and who is great. TPB is only limited by it selections as it seems to not have as many torrents as some other sites.
SumoTorrent
SumoTorrent
SumoTorret gets a lot of love from me. The reason being is that SumoTorrent often has a nice selection of torrents that are not located on TPB. SumoTorrent also has a commenting system but it’s community, sorry to say, is (in my opinion) no where near as dedicated to providing quality content and information as TPB is. Yet, you can find much more on SumoTorrent which makes taking a look worth while. Sometimes SumoTorrent can be a bit slow, because they get flooded with so many requests that it is hard for them to keep up, but they’re doing quite a good job. I expect a lot more to come from them in the future, but only time will tell.
Software
There are many different P2P networks out there, but I’m simply going to go over two.
uTorrent
uTorrent is actually my favorite BitTorrent client. It’s insanely light-weight to the point where I don’t care about using any other clients. Of course, uTorrent might not be quite as easy to use as LimeWire, simply because it’s not a all-in-one. However, uTorrent is quite easy to use overall. Simply go to one of the BitTorrent search engine’s listed earlier in this lesson and search for a Torrent. Associate it with .torrent download files and you’re ready to go! Every time you download a file, it’ll open in uTorrent and start downloading. Quite simple. Of course, you can do the same with all other clients, but uTorrent just seems so darn quick about it!
Shareaza
Shareaza doesn’t get much use by me or any of my friends, but I know there are quite a lot of people using it on the internet, so it’s got to be decent, right? I believe the main reason people drift to Shareaza is because of the fact that it actually handles Gnutella, Gnutella2, EDonkey Network, BitTorrent, and FTP. That’s quite a lot bundled into one application, but it does seem to pull it off well. If you’re wanting to use more than BitTorrent, Shareaza might be the application you’re looking for. That way you don’t have to have multiple applications running at the same time, draining all you’re bandwidth without being able to control the usage accurately enough.
How to Download(BitTorrent)
Usually if you’ve downloaded a non-BT client, which uses another form of P2P, they generally provide a built in search so I won’t be covering non-BT downloading.
- First, open up your web browser and go to one of the previous search engines we went over(ThePirateBay or SumoTorrent).
- Enter your term into the search bar and see if you find anything.
- Click the download button(each website has it’s own button, that may look different, for downloading).
- When the pop up box comes up asking you what you would like to do with that .torrent file, instead of saving, click “Open With” and set it whichever BT client you installed(uTorrent, Shareaza, etc).
- Enjoy the fact that it is simply THAT easy.