Torrents are an excellent source of different content and media for entertainment and education. More than 28 million people share files through P2P network every day.
The importance of sharing is often underestimated. Many people believe that using torrents is illegal. However, providing non-copyrighted content isn’t against the law. Just the opposite, it’s a highly useful way to educate and entertain others.
What is Torrenting?
Torrenting is a simple and efficient way to send large files through the Internet. The majority is done through free torrent clients like BitTorrent, uTorrent, and Deluge.
To take advantage of the file, a user has to download a torrent file from the torrent website. These torrent files are uploaded directly by other site users (seeders), who are willingly sharing them with other users (peers).
When you receive the torrent file, you need a torrent client to download the actual file. Once you use the torrent client to open the torrent file, the actual file starts downloading to your computer. The more people are sharing (seeding) the same file, the faster you can download it. Meanwhile, the rest of the seeders experience less burden.
In short, people download each other’s files by using a third-party torrent client. Torrenting is one of the most popular large file sharing methods on the web today.
However, it comes with many nuances, such as pirating. That’s why many companies and individuals aren’t happy with torrents. However, hardly all torrenting is bad. The majority of it is 100% legal and extremely helpful.
What is Seeding a Torrent?
Seeding a torrent is sharing a file to be downloaded by peers. When you seed a torrent, you are allowing other users to take advantage of the information you are sharing.
Usually, when you download a movie, video, or another file to your device, you click the download link. Your computer makes a connection to the server where the file is located and the download begins. Essentially, you are downloading a file from a single server.
Torrenting works in a different manner. A torrent breaks one large file with data into numerous smaller files.
So when you use a torrent client to download a file, it connects with a large number of other servers to download the actual file from the peer-to-peer (P2P) network. Eventually, you are downloading small pieces of the file you need from different computers in the network.
Accordingly, when you are seeding a torrent, you are giving access to the entire file. However, the end-user (peer) may be getting only a part of it from you, and the rest from other seeders.
What Happens When a Torrent is Seeding?
To become a seeder, you download the torrent to your computer and then upload the small pieces you have downloaded simultaneously.
The initial file which you downloaded is divided into smaller parts. You store bits and pieces of the large file and offer it for downloading.
When the torrent is seeding, it’s available for other users to download. Several seeders represent one big file as a whole on the torrent’s P2P network.
If the torrent is seeding, it means that the user isn’t downloading a file from one server. Instead, several different seeders, who have the pieces of the file, are giving access to download them.
You become a seeder as soon as you download the initial pieces of the file. While you are waiting for the rest of them to be downloaded, you are already sharing the parts you have with the rest of the peers.
What to Do Once a Torrent Is Seeding?
The seeding process is simple and usually doesn’t require much of your attention. As soon as the torrent starts seeding, you can just let the process happen automatically. As long as you allow seeding, the client does the rest without your assistance.
To make sure the seeding process goes smoothly, don’t move the file from the location you initially downloaded it to from the torrent site. As soon as you change the location, the client stops accessing it.
Don’t forget about maintaining an internet connection. The seeding process will stop immediately after you sever the connection with the web.
For the seeding to continue, you need to keep your client running. It doesn’t mean that it must be opened. Most clients run on the background as you are dealing with other tasks. Just make sure you don’t exit the torrent client on purpose.
As long as you allow seeding, the process will proceed automatically. You may want to set a limit on how much you want to seed. It’s possible to adjust this parameter in the preferences menu. For example, if you download a 100MB file, you can set the client to stop seeding after you’ve shared 100MB.
How to Seed a Torrent
Seeding a torrent file is fairly easy. The majority of the seeding process is automated.
- Download a torrent and all its files to your computer.
- Make sure 100% of the torrent is downloaded
- Check for the progress bar to show that you are “seeding”
- Keep the torrent file in the same location
What does it mean when a torrent is seeding? You are sharing the files you’ve downloaded with other users.
Depending on the client you are using, you could face different seeding nuances. However, the majority of the top torrent clients has a low learning curve. All you need to do is download the file, keep the client running, and wait for others to take advantage of the information you are willingly sharing.
The legal side of torrent seeding can be tricky. It’s important to understand what kind of data you are sharing. As long as the item you are downloading is copyrighted, you could be breaking the law by getting it for free. The same is true for seeding.
Even though the number of torrent users who get caught and punished is rather small, it’s still vital to know the laws of your country before seeding torrents.
Torrents: What is the Benefit of Seeding
Both companies and individual users can benefit from using torrents. While individuals can have access to educational and entertainment materials, businesses can use torrents to improve their operation.
1. Sharing Information with Clients
On-demand access to information is an important issue for many companies. Be it movies, images, or other content, the ability to share it directly with the users can be highly efficient. Offering content on-demand can keep piracy levels down.
By offering people what they are looking for, a company can keep them from searching for it elsewhere.
2. Improving Exposure
For companies and individuals, who create content like videos, films, and music, the ability to share it is priceless. They need exposure to jump-start the career or bring new clients in. Getting noticed by millions of users quickly is a tough task. Seeding content as torrents can make it easier.
3. Accessing Large Pieces of Data
When you need to provide data that’s too big to be uploaded on the website or share through the cloud, torrents are a perfect choice. Initially, torrenting was made specifically for this purpose. You can use it to share business files, educational information, installation files, photos, research, and much more.
As a bonus, you are saving a lot of bandwidth, making access quicker, easier, and cheaper. Such companies as Twitter and Facebook use BitTorrent for internal updates.
4. Downloading and Updating Programs
Seeding software updates is an excellent way to give all users easy access to them. Be it a patch for a game or an OS update, large files are much easier to transfer by using torrent clients.
Some companies use torrent clients as an alternative way to help users download their programs.
Many people don’t realize that seeding torrents can be legal and highly convenient. While the data you upload to a public torrent website becomes 100% public, there are ways to set up private torrent seeding networks. They can help many companies transfer internal files and simplify private data distribution.
Key Takeaway: What is Seeding a Torrent
Seeding a torrent means sharing the file you have on your computer with other people. To do that, you need to use a torrent client. If you’ve downloaded a file through a torrent client, you automatically start seeding it unless you put some limits on the seeding process.
Torrents are an integral part of the file-sharing system on the internet. They allow individuals and companies to provide large files to others by simplifying and speeding up the downloading process.
Before seeding a torrent, it’s important to understand the legal implications of the process by studying the laws of your country.
Reply