[Speakers] torrents

[Bruce Smith]

> > > I have just started looking into using it and find it quite 
> > > cool, but what kinds of downloads are there or should I say how does one find 
> > > the "legal" (and yes I mean the legal, this illegal is far too easy to find) 
> > > stuff?  How does it actually work? Is there any kind of listing for open 
> > > source projects that are available through this form of P2P?
> > I've ONLY used to for Linux distributions (ISO images).  Many distros
> > (at least the ones I've downloaded), specify the torrent (config?) file
> > on the download page of their web site.
> 
> Besides ISO's what is general large enough to merit the use of
> Bitorrent?  

What really matters is not size alone, but the demand for bandwidth.
(the size of the files times the number of people trying to download it)

An example is when a new release of Fedora comes out, the demand is so
high that the FTP server and all the mirrors are swamped with everyone
trying to download the latest ISO images.  Because of that, most people
can't connect to a FTP server/mirror, or if they do connect they get a
really slow download rate.

So, I use Bittorrent instead.  Since it's a peer-to-peer thing, everyone
is sharing their copy (or the part they've downloaded so far) with
everyone else.  You're actually downloading from a couple dozen IP's at
once, and I almost always max out my 3M bandwidth.  The only thing it
costs me is some upload bandwidth.  And you can limit your upload rate
as a parameter on the bittorrent command line (if you like).

So, IMO, it really only makes sense for very popular file(s) that a lot
of people are currently downloading.  And perhaps for files that don't
have a good FTP site and/or a lot of mirror sites.

It's a shame that people have also used this really cool program to
illegally share copyrighted material.

> Is there a bit torrent module for Win32 workstations?

I think so, but I never checked into it.  IIRC, it's a python script.

 - BS