BitTorrent P2P question

[man4allcats]

Is anyone here a BitTorrent user? This is my first time to try peer to peer technology. I used it (apparently successfully) to download OpenOffice 2.0. I wasn't sure I actually had the BitTorrent software set up correctly, but the download worked so I guess it is right. In the BitTorrent documentation and in the software itself, I noticed various references to a "torrent," but so far I have not found a definition for that term as it applies to this particular brand of P2P technology. In short then, anybody know what a torrent is? - in English please, though I realize that may not be entirely possible if the explanation is pretty geeky. Just do the best you can, and I'll try to follow along. :-)

Thanx in advance!

[ConsAreLiars]

1. Not an expert, but basically

it is a technique for getting all parts of a large file simultaneously from several sources.

The usual download involves selecting a file and a source, and then getting it in one long sequence from that single source, starting with the first bytes in the file and ending when the last one is received.

BitTorrent accepts your request for a file, then locates several places where that file or some parts of can be found, and then asks each source to send you some of the chunks that they have, and once they arrive (the order that happen to show up doesn't matter) stitches them back together into a whole. If any sources go offline, it just locates other sources for those chunks, and continues until complete.

The advantages are that you are able to continue the download so long as anyone in the network has it, rather than being stuck with a single source, and your download speed is limited only by your connection (assuming several sources), rather than the speed of a single host.

That's how I understand it, but if I'm too far off someone will correct me.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

2. Not hard to use at all

A little light reading, directly from the source (plain english):

http://www.bittorrent.com/index.html

http://www.bittorrent.com/introduction.html

http://www.bittorrent.com/documentation.html