Did your internet provider ever fuck your download speeds for some bullshit or for downloading from “non-whitelisted” websites?
For devs and hosts: Did you ever release a file only for your bank balance to be more “down” than the 20gb file download itself?
For big companies: Have your download servers ever crashed because everyone was trying to download a major release?
For everyone: Did it ever occur that websites hosting files can go down and the file becomes essentially inaccessible until its back?
All those problems could’ve been solved with a certain level of collaboration. Not only big companies like Microsoft or Google, but also people choosing to be part of a more efficient system.
That collaboration has existed for years. We call it P2P.
Let’s cut the crap and say: P2P is peer-to-peer. Basically everyone CAN be a host and/or a client on the same network.
One technology that does exactly this is BitTorrent (sometimes referred to incorrectly as Torrent)
Torrents work by splitting files into smaller chunks and downloading them from different people.
It’s important to say that Torrents are NOT a technology dedicated to piracy. Torrents ARE used for piracy and seen way more in that context than normal download links. That is a side effect of the interesting technology and not its original purpose.
Imagine a new windows ISO releases and everyone gets a lightning fast download speed of 2kb/year. If we imagine the same scenario BUT using torrents instead, every person downloading makes the download faster as they become a “mini-server” (if they upload; more on that later), providing the already downloaded “parts” to other clients trying to download the same file.
This might sound like bullshit to you and I don’t blame you. I’m in love with technology and networking since I was 8 years old, this is common sense to me which is why I’m explaining it here.
I could spend hours explaining how preservation of files would be easier or how “states couldn’t control the shit you download” (that is a really bold claim btw) but I prefer to say something everyone likes.
Imagine that you’re downloading a.. I don’t know.. Maybe a mod for a game like Project 2008. Now imagine that shit just released and theres 200 dudes downloading it, that shit is going to be slow as hell.
Recreate the same scenario but with torrenting: You download a 5mb file (.torrent) drag it to your favorite torrent program (important to say it can also be just a magnet link that you click), click download and as more people try to download it, the faster your download gets (if people actually leave sharing enabled).
For that to happen, we need YOU to understand how to download torrents, and A SMALLER part of YOU to actually provide torrents with your downloadable files.
Starting with it is simple as downloading a torrent client like the goated and beloved qBittorrent.
Important to say that making torrents isn’t full of bullshit as some people make it sound. Here’s a tutorial.