BitTorrent : Faster and more stable Downloads

What is BitTorrent ?

BitTorrent is an open source peer-to-peer protocol for distributing large amounts of data and files over the internet.The idea behind BitTorrent is to allow massive distribution of popular files without paining the actual source(Server).

How the traditional download works ?

Consider a traditional download method, where the user downloads a file from a server.When unusually high numbers of users are simultaneously downloading the same file, causing the server to run out of available bandwidth. When this happens the clients are refused a connection with the server and even results in a server crash.

To solve this problem Programmer Bram Cohen released a protocol called BitTorrent in April 2001.

How the BitTorrent Works then ?

image courtesy of wikipedia

The first distributor or server acts as the first seed, then each pair who downloads the data also shares the downloaded parts with the other peers.This helps to reduce the original distributor's bandwidth and hardware resource costs.

You can read more about BitTorrent here..

How do I download files using BitTorrent ?

Using BitTorrent for downloading files is very simple, all you need is a BitTorrent client and an active internet connection.Okey we can do it in 3 easy steps.

1. Get a BitTorrent client

• BitTorrent client is a software that uses BitTorrent protocol to download and manage torrents.There are a lot of BitTorrent client software available for each platform(Mac,Linux and Windows).Some popular BitTorrent clients are : Vuze (formerly known as Azureus),BitTorrent,uTorrent.

• The best choice for mac users is Vuze, for windows users uTorrent and for Linux Users BitTorrent.

• Just download any of these client software and install it.(Azureus and BitTorrent are available for Windows Linux and Mac OS X).
  

2. Find a torrent to download

• Okey now you have a BitTorrent client installed, now you need to find some torrent you like to download.

click on the image to enlarge

• for example : go to www.mininova.org and search for ''elephants dream" and click on a search results with more number of seeders (more number of seeders means fast download rates).

click the image to enlarge

• Now click on the desired torrent link and download the torrent file (.torrent file) from the site.

3. Start the download

• Once the file is downloaded double click on the file to open it.Some clients like Vuze may ask you to specify where to save the files.

That's all, now you are using BitTorrent !

Tips and Techniques

There are several BitTorrent sites , here are some of my favorites

• mininova
• torrentz - torrent search engine
  
• thepiratebay
• eztv - download tv shows

For faster Download rates

Choose torrents with more seeders than leechers
http://torrentfreak.com/speed-up-your-torrents/ checkout this link for a nice article on how to increase your torrent speed.

Read my review on Vuze (Formerly known as azureus), one of the most advanced and feature rich BitTorrent client available.

Cactuses : An Open Movie

Cactuses is an Open Motion Picture created by some twenty-four High School students and five college students based in Manteca, CA.The idea of Cactuses derived to turn the production process of a feature length motion picture into a productive learning experience for a crew made up entirely of students.And the project also aimed a high quality production, above the expected standards.



Story of the Movie

Cactuses is a story of a young man named Simon whose life of rejection and broken relationships takes a turn when he meets an older woman named MaryBeth who works at a cactus shop.

read more..


Production of the film



The movie was taped in 2002, this is the result of a non-profit movie making venture that interned 24 high school students and and five college students throughout the production and making of the movie... read more

Release of the Movie

The movie is released using BitTorrent Technology which is already exceeded 2,000,000 downloads.The movie was released as a DivX encoded file reaching almost 1 gigabyte in size.The movie is also available in Google Video, so it could be viewed without download, or download with a smaller file size.

Click here to Watch the movie online with google video.

Click here to Download the movie from Vuze (An open entertainment platform).This is a High-Quality version of the movie with 809.97 MB size.

However the movie is not completely Open Source, see the license. They don't allow further enhancements or editing in the movie.

Tips for Downloading the movie.

If you have a low bandwidth connection and you need to download the movie, better download from the Google video (306 Mb).You can download Google videos using KeepVid. Just copy the url of the google video and paste in the KeepVid and click the download button.You can either download the low quality flv version or the medium quality mp4 version.

You can use Azureus (Vuze) torrent client or Utorrent for downloading the high quality version of the movie from Vuze.

Azureus (Vuze) - The best BitTorrent Client

I've been using a bunch of BitTorrent clients (BitFlu, BitThief, BitTorrent) with my mac. To tell the truth I was not satisfied with any of them.I'm a control freak, so I was looking for something better. One day while googling i noticed a client called Azureus (Now it's called Vuze) in some blogs and reviews.So I thought I Could give it a shot.Now I'm a die-hard fan of Azureus.

Azureus is a favorite with both the advanced users and newbies, Azureus offers a legion of features including Plug-in system and huge range of tweakable settings.It's interface is not as glossy as the BitTorrent's or some other clients but It is fair and rich with features.Below the main toolbar is a pair of windows. The top one tracks the files you're downloading, the bottom one shows files you're seeding. Right-clicking on any file and selecting Show Details will open up a host of graphical views.

Plugins :

There are a lot of plugins available for Azureus,Popular plug-ins include Speed-Scheduler (which can help us to manage upload and download speeds on a schedule), an RSS Feed Scanner that can automate downloads for particular titles you're in search of, and even a plug-in that e-mails you when a download is finished.

Customization :

The customization features offered by Azureus is superb, and includes seeding rules, the ability to adjust your disk cache, and the ability to set upload and download speeds on individual files and for the entire player and there are a lot of other features..

Key Features:

- Runs on Windows, Mac OSX and Linux

- Free and Open Source Software

- Multiple, concurrent downloads

- Intelligent queue and bandwidth management

- Peer connection and download speed optimization

- Peer communication through firewalls (UPnP and NAT traversal)

- Trackerless support (Mainline and Azureus DHT)

- Multiple user interfaces (Simple, Advanced, Classic)

- Over 50 plugins to customize functionality

- Access to licensed content from Vuze

Officlial Site

Click Here to Download for Mac