When the popular file-sharing service Napster was sued and carefully laid down, lightweight filesharer find a new technology that was not quite so vulnerable.
The Bit torrent was developed by the young American Bram Cohen in 2001. The technology was particularly suited to share large files on a network that was not centrally organized.
It was not long before bittorrent took over much of the traffic on the net in the whole world. In Sweden the traffic plunged after a new law that could reveal the people behind the URLs entered into force, much of the traffic was a file sharing via bittorrent.
Requires little
The technology does not require many resources and major investments to work. When Cohen started the technology was just savings of computing resources that were at the heart of the philosophy of bittorrent.
A website set up where you can search through the information, and upload the so-called torrent files. A torrentfil will be completely out of copyright protected content, but contains pointers to where the content can be found on the Internet.
In principle, the technology is very similar to a standard search service, which initially did not store the content of web pages to point to. Legal situation is difficult to pursue, since no one runs bittorrent system will necessarily engage in copying of files. Any copying of the files on the users, not from a central and out.
When a person decides to share a file via bittorrent, create a torrent file where information about the distributed content is stored. This be so up to a site where the file is stored and indexed, then eventually be made searchable.
The site that put up the tasks to receive the torrent files from the uploader, create a search function for files and keep track of which users are with the division.
A person who wants to download content that torrent file has information about, need only to download the torrent file, which is tiny in size. When this is opened in a bittorrent program like Utorrent, Vuze, the Opera web browser or BitComet program will begin the search for the real content.
Seeders and peers
On the network of machines that arise distinguishes between machines (called peers in bittorrent terminology) that has the entire file (seeders) and those parts of it. When the download starts, you receive a peer sharing file from other computers.
Once part of the file is received, it will download the content and make it accessible for others on the network.
Thus one the fast network of computers where many of the machines have parts of the file, but only a few have the complete file. To create robust and efficient network that can quickly exchange large data files without a central service.
One of the major benefits of bittorrent technology is the machine that basically share the contents do not need to send a copy to anyone who wants. It requires, in principle, only to send a copy of the file to be shared, so the file will circulate between the computers on the network.
Legitimate use
Although a lot of content transmitted through BitTorrent is indubitable that the copyright owner's will, it is also vast amounts of legitimate content.
Perhaps the biggest commercial user of BitTorrent for the transfer of data is game company Blizzard, which sends large updates true the technology. Thus they can avoid the costs of having computers and transmission on the Internet.
The band Nine Inch Nails makes discs and are often freely available on the Web and let people download the music with BitTorrent.
Free-competitor to Windows, the free Linux operating system, comes in a variety of variations and most can be downloaded using the BitTorrent technology. Thus reduces the load on the expenses for what basically is a collaborative project.
Working towards independence
Although the bittorrent network is quite independent of the central sources, it is not completely decentralized. After the active pursuit of anti-pirates around the world have worked hard for programmers to create network completely without central sources.
An important part of bittorrent technology, the system that keeps track of which computers have which parts of the file already exists as an independent system.
A new technology under development called OneSwarm, aims to hide the contents of the various participants on the bittorrent network so it can hardly be detected who have the content.
