How to Download a Torrent?

A Torrent is a small file containing information about the files you will be downloading, file names, size, folders, and most importantly, list of trackers.

One can download these Torrents from websites, famous ones include:

• http://www.mininova.org/
• http://isohunt.com/
• http://fenopy.com
• http://www.demonoid.com/

The interface of most sites is similar, where you search for what you want and pick a result from the list, check the details then download the Torrent and open it using your client – BitTorrent as an example – and leave the client to download after optionally editing the available options.

I will be explaining Mininova.org, I count on this site, as it is very organized, looks neat, mostly containing what I am searching for, and most important, CLEAN of p0rno, there are other good websites, you will know them by time.

Let us go to www.mininova.org, you can simply go to www.mininova.com and it will re-direct you to the original website – in case it is easier for you to remember mininova.com.

You’ll notice the search bar at the top of the page, letting you to start searching even before the page completely loads in case you are running slow, then a well-organized list of Newly Popular Torrents will appear, you might have a look at it if you don’t want to download something specific.

I’ll search for Windows 7 as an example to illustrate how to choose the most probably clean and fast torrent, notice that when you start typing, the smart search will show you possible keywords you might be searching for, making it easy for you more and more.

After the list of results loads, you should click on Software, to narrow the results to the most desired ones, and then after the page loads, click on Seeds, to arrange the results with seeds, this should look similar to this.
So, what are seeds and what are leechers?

A Seed is a user who has 100% of the file or folder and is still currently uploading the file to other users.

Leechers would not have 100% of the file but are currently downloading more parts and uploading the parts they have to others, the term may differ as it may means users who are downloading but not sharing at all, which is not good.

One may ask himself or herself, why would I share and upload?

Simply, if everyone thinks in the same way, you’ll never be downloading, since there MUST be at least 1 seeder for you to download, but when there are many seeders, the Torrent will download faster.

In addition, after you finish downloading, it is preferred to leave the client running and not to stop the torrent immediately, this way you will be sharing and uploading to the rest of the users, in another words, you’ll be a Seeder.

Back to our search results, how to choose the most probably fast and clean Torrent?

There is no direct way or steps to do, but there are some recommendations that you will get used to by time, some of them;

1. The number of comments – at the right of the Name column – indicates that people download this Torrent and have given their opinion, whether it is good or bad, the more comments, the more it is likely to be real, except if the comments tell the opposite.
2. The Size, you should pay an attention to it, so you don’t download a file bigger or smaller than expected.
3. And the most important, seeds and leechers, there is no rule controlling this, but by sense, the one having more seeds will be faster, sometimes the number of leechers is larger in all Torrents, so you should think of it as a ratio between seeds and leechers, remember that we have arranged the list by seeds in decreasing order, this should help a lot.

After choosing a Torrent, a page similar to this should appear.
There are four Tabs:

General Information
It provides some basic info and a description written by the one who first shared and made this Torrent.

Details
It provides you with what is included in this Torrent, folders, files, their arrangement, as if you are looking into it using Windows Explorer, and also the size of each file, as well as the total size.

Comments and Thanks
Thanks is something new you will not find in other sites, it is like how many found this Torrent good and thanked the uploader in return, the comments will provide you with a guaranteed opinion of users, whether it is fake or clean, virus free or has viruses, high quality or no.

Of course, you will find some comments saying it is fake or has viruses and is of low quality, and other saying the opposite, one should see which is more frequent, being clean or no, has viruses or no, high quality or low, by time you will learn how to analyze the comments.

Report a Problem
Here you should be able to report if you faced a problem, but don’t be very optimistic, this is a free service, you should not wait for a reply though, instead, search for other ways or sites to download what you need, that’s sure a lot faster.

After checking that this Torrent seems to be the one you want, click from any tab on Download this Torrent button.

Your Questions/Comments are welcomed and helpful, feel free to ask or comment :)

Now Enjoy your Downloads,
Mahmoud Tantawy

Downloading, installing, and using BitTorrent

In order to download and use Torrents, you will need to download certain program called “Client”, in fact there are many clients available, this is similar to multimedia players, there are many out there, some famous Torrent clients are;

• BitTorrent
• BitComet
• BitLord
• uTorrent
• And many others…

Here, we are going to download “BitTorrent”, one of the most famous, easy-to-use, and fast clients, you can download it from www.bittorrent.com, or www.download.com, checking Download.com this morning I found that it had 14,877,717 downloads.

Upon visiting www.bittorrent.com, at the right side of the page you will see a button that says “Get BitTorrent”, click on it and you will be taken to the page where you can download the client for Windows, MacOS X, Linux, or even older versions.

Choose from these options to start downloading.

Then, run the program and begin the installation, this should be an ordinary installation but take care when you reach this window, asking you to install an optional toolbar, you may or may not install it, it will NEVER affect your BitTorrent client, if you don’t wish to install it, uncheck all the check boxes as follow.

Then click install, and continue your installation normally.

When you first run your BitTorrent, a similar message box will appear
It is preferable to click “Yes”, this will help us while downloading our Torrents from websites to automatically open BitTorrent as the default Torrent application.

Now, let us adjust and tweak BitTorrent to work even better.

From Options menu, choose Preferences, or simply CTRL+P.
General:
Under Windows Integration, click the three buttons that begin with the word Associate, then check “Check association on startup”, and uncheck “Start BitTorrent on system startup”, you may check it but one usually prefers faster startup for his system, thus, decreasing the startup programs.

Under When Downloading, check “Prevent standby if there are active torrents”, especially if you are going to leave your PC downloading over nights or when you are not using it, preventing your system from going standby while it should be downloading for you.

UI Settings:
I tend to check all check boxes except “Single click on tray icon to open”, and “Don’t start the download automatically”, the later one lets us edit many options while adding the Torrent, I believe the rest are clear, and if you got questions, ask in the comment section and I’ll be replying.

Other options can be edited but there is no preferred choice for them, as they depend on the user, the system, and your bandwidth, and mostly, you will get to understand them by time and experience, as I said, most of them are unique to each user.

One disadvantage of Torrent clients is that they use all the available bandwidth, whether the download or the upload, leaving you unable to even open a web page, but BitTorrent does offer a solution.

Advanced – UI Extras:
Check “Override automatic speed popup list”, this enables us to edit the available preset maximum download and upload speeds, to reach this list, right click the icon in the taskbar next to the clock, and you will have two lists, Download limit, and Upload limit.

Choosing your download limit is the most important here, and will depend primarily on your DSL download speed, say it is 256Kb/sec.

To calculate the download speed in Kbytes – since this is the used speed in the list – divide the 256 by 8 = 32 Kbytes/sec, this is the maximum download speed you can get, of course the actual speed will vary between 20 and 30 Kbytes/sec.

So, we can choose a list starting with 0 reaching 40, and with step = 5, by doing so, you can simply set the download limit to 15 Kbytes/sec as an example when you want to open some web pages or download some files, note that you can pause the whole downloading process safely if you need the whole bandwidth.

I suggest that you don’t edit the upload limit or even use it, we will trick BitTorrent client and limit the upload in other useful way.

We won’t use the GLOBAL upload limit option because upon using upload limitation, BitTorrent as-well-as many Torrent clients will lower your download speed, because you are sharing less and by doing so, it sees that you deserve to download with less speed as well, we will tweak that option soon.

Now, Click OK to save your preferences.
Assuming that you’ve downloaded a torrent – this will be explained in another post – by opening this Torrent, the BitTorrent will launch and similar window should appear.

In this window, you can:

1. Change where will the downloaded files be saved.
2. Whether the torrent will start downloading or no, you may uncheck this if you are downloading another torrent and don’t want this to delay the other Torrent.
3. See some info about what you are going to download.
4. Check which files you want to download, in case you want a specific file.

Until now, these are basics; by clicking Advanced, you’ll be able to tweak some useful options.

Bandwidth Settings: Here you can edit the download and upload limits of this specific Torrent, changes here will NOT affect the GLOBAL upload or download speeds, so, BitTorrent will NOT force a decreased download speed.

To determine your upload speed, divide your download speed by 4, so, for 256 Kb/sec you get 8 Kbytes/sec.

The best choice is 2 Kbytes/sec if you will download one Torrent at a time, or 1 Kbytes/sec if you will download more simultaneously.

Trackers: Trackers are servers organizing and controlling the network of torrents, they connect users to each other, so, more trackers, more users, more speed, you should notice that trackers MUST be separated by an EMPTY LINE, some torrents are not prepared this way, you should add an empty line between each two so that BitTorrent will sense them and use Them.

The rest of the interface of BitTorrent is easy-to-use, clear, and provide much information regarding your download; you may edit the columns of the upper part.

You may use the “Speed” tab in the lower part to see a graph of the download versus upload speed over time; this is useful to monitor your download in an easier way than looking to absolute numbers.

Your Questions/Comments are welcomed and helpful, feel free to ask or comment :)

Enjoy your BitTorrent,
Mahmoud Tantawy

What is Torrent? and Why is it preferable?

Four or five years ago when I first subscribed to my broadband DSL Internet connection, I started to look more deep into the P2P “Peer-to-Peer” world, I tried many programs like, Limewire, BearShare, and others, but eventually I’ve used BearShare for most of the time because I’ve found it easy-to-use and does the job.

In such programs, you connect to a wide network of users who are sharing movies, songs, images, e-books, and many other types, you then search for a certain movie or a song, and then a list of results appears and every file appears has a number showing how many users have it, and by this one can conclude which file will be faster, and mostly virus-free.

This was the case until many files became fake, viruses spread, users tend to use fake names for their files just to trick users, so when you download a file, expect it to be a cartoon, it may turn out to be a full p0rno movie!! Yeah, it happened to me once unfortunately, but being a virus, became very common, so I quit this type of P2P clients.

What this form of sharing lake is:

• Real info and description about what you are going to download;
• A way to comment on files shared, being real or fake, virus-free or has Trojans or viruses, the real quality of the file “an example is when the file be a movie”;
• Getting things organized, getting shared files categorized and grouped;

That was some of what Torrents provide.

Torrents are usually "Advantages of Torrents":

• Clean
• Guaranteed
• Downloaded faster
• Better quality
• Virus-free
• Have people discuss it by commenting
• Have a neat Description
• Not just one zipped file, but a folder from which you can download some files, not the whole thing “an example is when you want to download a certain song instead of the whole album”
• A source - I can trust! - of everything.

In the following posts I’ll show you how to download and choose which torrent is most probably the one you are looking for, some Torrent clients, some Torrent websites, and finally how to tweak your BitTorrent client.

Your Questions/Comments are welcomed and helpful, feel free to ask or comment :)

Cheers,
Mahmoud Tantawy

What is this Blog About?

Well, let me introduce myself first, I am Mahmoud Tantawy, a Student at Ain Shams University, Faculty of Engineering, Credit-Hours System, Communication Systems Department.

In this blog I’ll be mainly posting the latest IT-Related news I got, answering the questions I got from my friends through-out the past few years, as well as questions i’ll be receiving from my friends or anyone indeed.

The kind of news I’ll be posting will mainly be;

• New interesting hardware
• An Application I discovered and found useful
• New releases of well-known applications
• Latest Windows OS from Microsoft
• Linux Distributions I’ve tried
• News from Apple
• Stuff like that…

Also, I’ll try to compare different applications, such as different browsers, different OS’s, giving my own review side-by-side with what the world says about whatever I am reviewing.

I’ll at first post some articles I’ve written for different magazines, mainly “Karakeeb”, and “Spot”.

I will be waiting for your questions and your comments to help me improve this blog.

Have a nice day,
Mahmoud Tantawy