How do torrents work?

How do torrents work? 
What is Leeching?
What or who is a Peer?
How does bittorrent work?
What are trackers?

All questions are answered here !!

Downloading through a torrent is actually a P2P or Peer to Peer file sharing process. In this file sharing process, a torrent client locates the PC's throughout the network that have the file you need. These PC's are called peers. A sample of how this P2P sharing tkaes place is shown in the picture below.

 

 This sharing is probably derived from the concept of chain reaction and works in this way....

• You search for a file on net and find it on 'x' computers(Peers).
• These 'x' computers derive their file from other 'y' computers.
• and so on.........
• This forms a sort of a chain reaction. 

Downloading via torrents is of great importance as the speed is increased because greater the number of people located with the same file easier would be the download, since file transfer load is equally distributed.

These searches and file transfer can cause bottlenecks. What people do is that after downloading the file , they disconnect themselves from the server, without allowing others to locate file on their systems. So even if one of the systems is disconnected from the mid of the chain, the whole string of PC's joined to that particular computer suffers.This is called 'leeching'

Bittorrent!

Now when you talk of Leeching, Bittorrent is of great help and importace. It is a protocol which offloads a part of the peer tracking work to a Central Server (called Tracker). It also works on the principle of tit-for-tat. This makes it important for people to understand that you have to give files in order to receive them. Hance, Bittorrent is of great help in solving the problem of Leeching.In bittorrent the more you share, the faster you download.

Bittorrent converts your downloads into small pieces and downloads it from different locations. This helps in utilising your connection bandwidth properly!