Development

It was Bram Cohen who came up with the concept of the bit torrent protocol in 2001. Even today, with all the various torrent client software available, everyone has heard of the bit torrent. The reason for this, is that Bram Cohen’s company is called BitTorrent and is also the holder of the intellectual rights o the bit torrent protocol used by many of the P2P client programs available today.

The goal, was to create a means to distribute large amounts of data without the original data distributor having to pay for the entire expense of hosting a website to get traffic as well as use bandwidth to allow your visitors to download the data. Another goal was to also increase redundancy as well as reduce the burden of the original distributor. It was a success. The creation of the bit torrent protocol, now allows anyone to be a distributor regardless of your income or financial standings. When you offer your data in the form of a torrent file, others can download directly from your computer, placing the bandwidth usage on the ISP and not your own. Then, once another person has the complete file, and a third person comes along, they can download from both computers simultaneously.

The goal is the same with any type of torrent software, They are all built with the basic bit torrent protocol in mind, but can literally be on any programming platform. There are some that are developed on Python and C++ as well as Visual Basic and more.

Regardless of the software platform used to build your bit torrent software, the basic bit torrent protocol remains the same. It allows you to connect with other bit torrent users, even if they are utilizing a different client. If you already have a bit torrent client and have already downloaded a file, then you may have noticed your “Peers” section which will show you all the computers that your computer is currently connected to. Some clients will even tell you which bit torrent client software your “peers” are using as well as they may even show you the flag of the country in which that particular IP address belongs to.

The bit torrent client is no where near being fully developed. They are undergoing changes almost on a monthly basis. As each new bug get uncovered, an update is released. It is very important to maintain your up dates. On top of all of this, you may wonder how it can still be in development even though you have a non-beta version already installed on your computer. The reason is simple. Unlike Windows who has been around for well over 10 years, the bit torrent protocol has been around for a fairly short time. The shortness of time that the bit torrent protocol has been in existence, coupled with the ever increasing pressure from ISPs and copyright authorities, the bit torrent protocol is in an ever-adapting form that is constantly changing as each new problem arises.

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