PEX or Peer Exchange is used to increase the speed at which files are downloaded by reducing the dependency on centralized trackers and instead allowing each peer to keep partial lists of peers in the swarm individually and share with other peers directly. Also, a “private” flag in the torrent file (used most commonly by private trackers) instructs the client to disable DHT. It's also worth noting that there are incompatible DHT networks thus depending on which DHT the client supports torrent availability may change. This allows for tracker-less torrents, eases the load on centralized servers and is especially useful in cases of unreliable trackers. It is used to store peer contact information essentially making each peer a tracker.

Tracker is a server that enables creating connections between peers.Ĭhoking is the process of refusing to send files to a particular client.Īvailability represents how many full copies of a torrent are available.ĭHT or Distributed Hash Table is a decentralized distributed system that distributes files more efficiently and saves bandwidth.

Swarm is a collection of users interested in sharing a specific torrent. Seeders are users with a complete torrent and downloaders are users with a part of the torrent. Peers can be further divided into seeders and downloaders (or leeches). Peer is a user sharing a specific torrent. It is also used to describe the file or collection of files and folders themselves. Torrent is a file containing information about files and trackers. While virtually all clients will cover the basic task of downloading files, there are many combinations of usability, features and philosophy to consider depending on intended use. Traditional vs Decentralized P2P DownloadingĬhoosing a BitTorrent client can be a difficult process due to the complex nature of the technology. BitTorrent is a file transfer protocol used to share files between users without requiring a central server that hosts the files.

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