Downloading torrentsWhen you want to get a file from a BitTorrent network you first must use a search engine to find what is known as the 'torrent'. There are plenty of search engines dedicated to finding these. A torrent contains information about the file you wish to download. For example, to find a particular video file, you could first visit a Torrent search engine like The Pirate Bay (http://www.thepiratebay.org), and if you are lucky the file is available. However you do not download the file you want directly, rather, you download the small torrent file instead. Next you open the torrent file in a BitTorrent client (a type of software, in this case we are using Azureus) and then that software finds the video file specified in the torrent and begins to download it.
A torrent files is very quick to download. This is because Azureus uses the information in this file to connect to other users who have the file you want on their computers, and starts to download it from them. This means that you may be downloading the file from a lot of users at the same time, so that the more people who are sharing the file the quicker it will download to your computer.
When you go to a torrent search engine like The Pirate Bay and click on the download link for the torrent, the browser will normally ask you if you wish to download the file using Azureus if you already have it installed.You should choose this method as it is the simplest method. If Azureus is not set up to open torrents you have downloaded then you can save the .torrent file to your computer. Then open Azureus and select File and then Open, and 'Torrent File...' from the top menu : You will see a file browser and you can use this to browse for the torrent file you downloaded : Click 'Open' and your Torrent will be opened in Azureus and the search for computers to download the file from begins... |
