Despite the fact that BitTorrent has been around for a good 6 years now, the lightning fast file sharing protocol hasn't completely taken off in the mainstream. Since we post a decent amount about BitTorrent around here, we figured it was just time we put out a beginner's guide to BitTorrent. This is the guide you can send to your friend next time he gets that glassy look in his eyes when you mention BitTorrent and how quick and easy it makes downloading albums educational, public domain videos and other large files.
Without going into too much detail, here's a crash course in the file sharing protocol that is BitTorrent (feel free to skip to the How to find and download a file with BitTorrent section if you're not all that interested in the details).
BitTorrent is not like Limewire/Kazaa/Napster/other P2P programs you've used in the past. This is often the biggest source of confusion for people new to BitTorrent. It's not difficult to use, it's just different. As soon as you forget about your old file-sharing program (and you will once you start using BT), the easier it will be to start using BitTorrent.
What makes the BitTorrent protocol unique is that it distributes the sharing of files across all users who have downloaded or are in the process of downloading a file. Because BitTorrent breaks up and distributes files in hundreds of small chunks, you don't even need to have downloaded the whole file before you start sharing. As soon as you have even a piece of the file, you can start sharing that piece with other users. That's what makes BitTorrent so fast; your BitTorrent client starts sharing as soon as it downloads one chunk of the file (instead of waiting until the entire download has been completed).
In order to download a file like the educational public domain video we mentioned above, you have to find and download a torrent file (which uses the .torrent file extension) and then open it with your BitTorrent client. The torrent file does not contain your files. Instead, it contains information which tells your BitTorrent client where it can find peers who are also sharing and downloading the file.
First you need to download a BitTorrent client (the program that manages your BitTorrent downloads). I'd recommend:
