Computer Network Freaks

How does torrent works?

Most of Software's,movies,videos e.t.c are downloaded with the help of torrents but do you know the technology behind it? How does torrent work? It is an wonderful and my favourite networking technology called peer to peer connection.

In this Technology the users(we) do not download content from a server,but we download the content from another user that is downloading the same file.

There are two basic terms before understanding how does torrent works and they are:-
peer:-He is the one who download the content
seed:-He is the one who upload the content

Remember that you can be a peer to another user while a seed to another.


Now,I think you would probably have a question that how can we download a content from a user who is currently downloading a file and does not have whole file.

There should be one seed peer who has whole content and seeds it to keep torrent running.

 Let me give explanation with the help of an example:-

Suppose there are three users A,B and C and a file networks.mp4. This file contents are divided into 6 blocks 1,2,3,4,5,6. Now if initially user A is seed and B has downloaded block 1 and 2 while user C has downloaded  5 and 6. Ok?? Got this thing?? This was just the initially condition,the crux is yet to come.

Now user B will say to user C that you give me block 5 and 6.User C would upload it to B only if he gets something.Here it is block no 1 and 2. If user C has nothing to download from user B he will not upload it simple.

So user B downloads 5 and 6 while uploads 1 and 2 and user C vice versa.

I question would probably arise:

What if there is no one downloading the content at present time?? Where he will get the data??

So the answer is the seed peer who does download anything but seeds its contents so as to keep a torrent running.If there is no seed peer,the torrent would fail.

So this was the concept to the generally asked question how does torrent works? Hope you found it usefull.