Due to the fact that the various bit torrent client software have to rely on ports and IP addresses to make connections, this creates a large security vulnerability for most people. Too often, rather than creating the exceptions for their bit torrent client software in their firewall, people will actually disable their firewall prevention. When a person uses a bit torrent client software, their IP addresses are made public to others on the network. Just because you may no longer be downloading a particular file, also does not mean that your IP address is no longer available. The trackers keep tabs on this to maintain connections even long after you have downloaded a file.

A dubious person can very easily look up these IP addresses and possibly even hack them and leave a virus or a worm behind them. Most of this of course can be prevented by simply added the exception to the firewall, and never turning it off. This does not mean that you are still free from possible hacks, as hackers can still access your computer through the ports that you have left open for the software. Special care must be taken, especially when downloading. If you are downloading a questionable torrent, chances are, someone may bee looking for your computer by using the torrent for this purpose.

There is also many forms of limitations imposed by the bit torrent client software. Although offering an incentive is no where on the docket, the network can still punish you. For example, if you download a torrent, there is no incentive for you to seed, or in return share that file with others, so many times people just do not do it at all and delete their logs in an attempt to not be lecher punished. The various bit torrent indexing websites may or may not also maintain IP information on who has downloaded what and what their share ratio is. This leeching is a form of punishment. If you are not sharing, the software can simply slow down you downloads until you share. But you can always clear out your logs to prevent this. But now-a-days, many of the indexing sites are doing the same. These you can not simply clear out, you have to share or you cannot download.

Unfortunately, many people today still share an IP address and since the indexing websites and their torrents go by IP address, it is completely possible for you to be leech punished for someone else’s failure to share. This becomes an even greater issue in some 3rd world and developing countries where a ISP may have you sharing an IP with sometimes over 1,000 other clients.

Popularity: 10% [?]

One of the most important parts of the bit torrent network is obviously the trackers, cause without them, there would be no bit torrents. However, over the last couple of years, much change has occurred to the bit torrent client software, one of these changes is the DHT, or the ability to download a file without an actual tracker. Unlike other P2P networks, the bit torrent network relies on the torrent file which contains a sort of roadmap to the other computers in the network that maintain parts or whole files of that particular file you are looking for.

Although by technicality, you can download without the need of a tracker, the hardest part, is getting others to access the same file without some sort of centralization. This comes more into play when dealing with a file which for any number of possible reasons, may become no longer available. In this case, if the bit torrent file has been set up to allow DHT, the remaining computers can still connect with each other and continue the full download. So the DHT, is more fundamentally for the longevity of a bit torrent file rather than the ability to completely download without a centralized bit torrent indexing website.

Other forms of trackers, which are not as appearent is the us of an RSS feed style connection in which any and all clients in the network broadcast the files that are open for share to the other clients in the network. This allows you to search within the client side software to find the file you are looking for. Although this is more accurate as far as the number of available sources, it also leads to a higher level of legal responsibility on the developer of the P2P software.

One such program that utilizes this RSS style feature is the Ares P2P network. In this network, which is also capable of downloading torrents as well, you can also preview the file that you are downloading. For example, if you are downloading a movie file, you can preview it by pushing play, but instead of seeing the whole thing, you can only see the parts that you have already downloaded. The program itself, splices the pieces together to allow you to preview it.

But Ares is a P2P program and not technically a bit torrent protocol software seeing as it uses a different line of protocols more similar to that of eDonkey.

It is, no matter how you look at it, important to have some means to communicate between the various nodes, or client computers in any bit torrent or P2P network. It is within this communication that allows you to be able to connect with other computers to ensure that you can download the file that you are looking for. Unfortunately, just as the software needs these communications, or “road maps”, any person who is of a dubious nature can also access these IP addresses that the clients utilize in order to take advantage of your own personal computer as well as ISP.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Client side implementation of the bit torrent client is rather straight forward in 99.9% of the situations. You are basically going to a website where you can download a bit torrent client, download and install it and that’s it. However, there are some issues that may come up when dealing with the client side implementation of a bit torrent client.

First and foremost is a firewall. In general, most people’s firewall is set-up to automatically create rules that will allow a bit torrent client to gain access to a port of its or your choosing. However, this is not always the case as some people have their firewalls set-up to make no exceptions. If this is the case, the best way, and of course the easiest, is to change your firewall settings before installing the bit torrent client. If not, chances are, you will have to manually make an exception.

The bit torrent clients need access to a port in your computer. This is not a visual port, but rather a computer generated one. In many instances, you may already be utilizing some of your available ports. For example, if you access the internet to get your bit torrent client, you are connecting to another computer’s port 80.

It is these ports that allow simultaneous connections to the world. If you are in a network, and you have a router in your home or office, most likely you will have to access your router’s configuration and add the bit torrent client to create an exception. What this does, is it actually forwards any incoming connections that are asking for a particular port, directly to your computer. Otherwise, the incoming connection will not be allowed. Sometimes your ISP may be using a router of some type and therefore you may not be able to get them to forward a port request. Do not feel bad if this is the case, you can still download, but it may not be as fast. The reason it may be slow, is instead of another computer connecting to you, their computer will send a request to someone you have already been connected to you, which in turn, that request will be forwarded to you. This is known as pushing UDP, all that it does, is tells your bit torrent client to connect with them instead of them connecting to you. This is sometimes called a handshake as well.

You may notice if you ever check your stats with your bit torrent client that you only made X number of incoming connections, but you had X² “Handshakes.” These are instances where you connected to another computer instead of that computer connecting to you. It all works out in the long run as long as you download the file you wanted.

Popularity: 11% [?]

The Similarity-Enhanced Transfer was developed to help speed up the transfer process between nodes in the file sharing network. The way it works, is it looks for chunks of data that are exact or an almost exact copy of what the client application is looking for. This technique is known as hand printing and it is basically looking for the data the file needs to be completed. By looking for and downloading similar chunks, you can actually improve the download time by 71%. The lower the SET filter is set, the more similar pieces it can find and therefore the number of connections that can be made. This is important as while you are downloading a file, you can suffer lags in between connection while the client application is looking for exact matches. By lowering the SET limit, you can then close these soft spots or lagging download points drastically which if figure out over the length of the entire download, you can increase the download time by up to 71%.

However, on popular data, the SET will most likely not help your download capabilities as these are limited by your ISP. However, when it comes to less popular files that have little seeds available, you can then increase this download time drastically whi will make it worth the effort.

The SET was developed by a joint effort between Professor David Andersen, Himabindu Pucha and Dr. Michael Kaminsky. After the development of this file sharing protocol, it would later be integrated into the bit torrent protocol. It is for this reason, that the bit torrent client applications are very expedient when it comes to downloading files. This also plays an important role in the development if the bit torrent protocol’s rarest first paradigm. In the rarest first technique, the client application will hunt down the rarest portions of the requested file first using the SET concept, therefore making the rarest portion, the least rarest and this will continue indefinitely until a medium is found in which all the pieces of data have the same availability. Or until you finish downloading the file!

There are many other concepts that have been envisioned into the development of the bit torrent protocol to help with its popularity and speed. Regardless of the underlying technology involved, the bit torrent protocol is now considered to be the most popular file sharing protocol in the world. Users can be found in any country that has a public internet access. Yes, there are still some in which the citizens do not have sufficient, or any internet access at all. Some of these reasons for the lacking can be as simple as cost, while others may be due to government constraints and control on its people. None the less, the bit torrent network is still considered to be the largest community on the web and in the world to date.

Popularity: 23% [?]

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Popularity: 55% [?]