What are torrents? How do torrents work?

In a single word, torrents are simply ‘files’ that hold information related to other files and folders that are to be distributed. When you download a movie torrent, this ‘torrent file’ contains necessary information which will let you get that movie.

While understanding the working of utorrent, that a torrent is a file that has a size that is not bigger than a few kilobytes of data. However, these tiny files are able to commence the downloading of even bigger files and this is done through one system.

when you are downloading a file from internet then it involves two parties. one is server and another is client computer. Server is a computer which holds data where as client computer is one which is receiving data. But in case of torrents both the parties are client computers there is no server. Then you will think how client gets the data, the answer is from another client.

Let us understand in detail, suppose you have one movie in your computer and you want to share that movie with your friend then you can do it using torrent. First you have to create one torrent file of your movie, torrent file is a file with  .torrent extension This file is of small size generally 10 to 20 kb. It contains all the information about the data(your movie in our case) being transmitted. Next step is you have to give this torrent file to your friend. When your friend opens this file using torrent software then the process of movie downloading starts. But important point here is that at the same time your computer should be on with active internet connection. If you turn off your computer then your friend will not able to download the file. It means when your friend is downloading the movie you are simultaneously uploading the movie, both you and your friend are client computers, file is getting transfered from one client computer to another.

Let us understand some terms in torrents.

Seed : seed is the client computer who have the file and who is uploading the file. In our case your computer is seed. Because you have the file and you are uploading it.

Peer : peer is the client computer who is downloading the file. In our case your friends computer is peer. 

There can be multiple number of peers and seeds. If number of seeds are more then download speed will be higher. If number of peers are more than number of seeds then downloading speed will be lower.

Should you continue to download torrents? Is it legal?

Torrents are legal, But downloading pirated contents from torrent is not legal. Therefore you can use torrents without any issue until you are not downloading any pirated containt.