Bittorent: What and How it works?

BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol used for distributing large amounts of data. BitTorrent is one of the most common protocols for transferring large files, and by some estimates it accounted for approximately 35% of all traffic on the entire Internet in 2002.

The protocol works initially when a file provider makes his/her file (or group of files) available to the network. This is called a seed and allows others, named peers, to connect and download the file. Each peer that downloads a part of the data makes it available to other peers to download. After the file is successfully downloaded by a peer, many continue to make the data available, becoming additional seeds. This distributed nature of BitTorrent leads to a viral spreading of a file throughout peers. As more peers join the swarm, the likelihood of a successful download increases. Relative to standard Internet hosting, this provides a significant reduction in the original distributor's hardware and bandwidth resource costs. It also provides redundancy against system problems and reduces dependence on the original distributor.

Programmer Bram Cohen designed the protocol in April 2001 and released a first implementation on July 2, 2001.It is now maintained by Cohen's company BitTorrent, Inc. There are numerous BitTorrent clients available for a variety of computing platforms. According to isoHunt, the total amount of shared content is currently more than 1.7 petabytes.

Source: Wikipedia

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