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Tutorials - Bit Torrent

Disclaimer - you are breaking the law by downloading and using copyright protected media or any media that is illegal in your jurisdiction. I am providing information only, what you choose to do with it is up to you. I am not responsible for anything you download and install using this information or for any damage done to your computer operating system, or for any content you find and download that is illegal. - Jonah

1. Introduction
2. Installation & Setup of ABC Bittorrent Client
3. Downloading with ABC

1. Introduction
Downloading Software, Movies, Music, Pictures etc using a Bittorrent Client is not illegal, as long as you do not download cracked software or copywrite protected material or anything that is illegal in your jurisdiction. Bit Torrent is very good for sharing large files, it is most commonly used to download Movies, TV Shows and Music. The BBC and US TV Networks use Bittorrent to distribute episodes of their popular shows for a couple of weeks after they have been on air. Bittorrent is also used to distribute Linux Operating Systems (known as "distros"). The disadvantage of Bittorrents is that they only last so long as people are uploading / downloading then they die.

Why use Bittorrent?
Firstly it is fast, the more uploaders / downloaders the faster the torrent. Also you have the ability to check downloads first to see if any other downloader reports problems, fakes or malware on a particular file so it is safer to a degree than a shared file from E Mule or Limewire where there is only a single source and you either trust it or not. Bittorrent sharing is done via hundreds, sometimes thousands of sources all sharing parts of the original file. Another point to bear in mind is that although it is possible for what is being downloaded and by whom to be traced, it is extremely difficult to achieve so generally if the torrent is illegal in any way the original uploader is the guy the authorities go after and you can bet he is well hidden.

How Does it Work?
The first person to upload a file for sharing is called the "seeder". The seeder does not upload the file itself he leaves it on a hard drive somewhere and uploads a very small file called a "tracker" to a Torrent Search Engine, the "tracker" holds the information about what the file is, where it is, how big it is, etc and is very small just a few Kbs. The most famous Torrent Search Engine is The Pirate Bay (based in the Netherlands after being kicked out of Sweden )another good one is Iso Hunt (in Canada) they work just like a normal search engine except they search for the "tracker" files. Once a downloader uses a search engine and finds a torrent he downloads the tracker and opens it with a Bittorrent client, the client then starts to download the target file direct from the seeders' PC. Initially there is only one seeder and one downloader but this is where it gets different. As the downloader completes parts of the file he will then start to upload the parts he has to other downloaders, who in their turn will download and upload parts of the original file as they acquire them, and so on. This grows expotentially if the file is very popular and eventually thousands of users are swapping bits of the original file with each other untill all downloaders have all parts of the original file.

Required Software

ABC Bittorrent - Essential
This is a simple, open source torrent client, because it is open source there is no malware or adware in it - guaranteed. This is because "open source" means that anybody can inspect the actual code so nothing can be hidden away in it. This tutorial is based on ABC Bittorrent (stands for "Yet Another Bittorrent Client"), there are many other clients available they are all free, never pay for a torrent client or any related service it is a scam. Because ABC is open source finding and downloading the correct file can be difficult for the uninitiated in the ways of sourceforge which is very geeky - so do the following for Windows XP Home or Pro.

NOTE- ABC is not "Vista Ready" so use Azureus instead here

1. Click Here to go to ABC's Homepage on www.sourceforge.org, have a read through the information then click the download link at the top.

2. The file you want for Windows is the top file " ABC-win32-v3.1.exe (Installer)" Download it to your hard drive and select "Save" when prompted by the download files dialogue.

Winrar - you will need this sooner or later
Winrar is an archiving tool, it compresses and decompresses files Download here you need Winrar v3.62 about half way down the page. You will need Winrar for some torrent downloads especially video quite a few files are compressed with Winrar or some other compression. Winrar decompresses almost anything you will come accross.

Power ISO - Recommended
Occasionally you will download a file that is a CD/DVD image, you have to burn this image to a CD//DVD. If you already have Nero Burning Rom installed or any other commercial CD/DVD burning tool you do not need this.

A CD image is like a printing press master, it is the mirror image of a CD, when you burn the image to a CD it is just like using a printing press to "stamp" the image the right way round on a CD which you can then put in the CD/DVD drive and it will be a normal CD/DVD. Image files are generally used for software like Linux Distros and of course "free" software 8-) There are many different image formats, Power Iso handles 95% of the ones you will come across, most commercial burning software will handle only some of them usually not the one you need at the time. There will be a how to on burning images with Power Iso later. Download here

2. ABC Torrent Client Setup >>>

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