Peer to Peer Networks

Disclaimer: The following article is going to explain the use of Peer to Peer Networks. Under no circumstances do I condone the use of these networks for illegal purposes. Anyone who attempts to access illegal content does so at their own risk. Please use Peer to Peer Networks responsibly.

Peer to Peer (P2P) networks have become things of huge controversy. Mainly because people have used them to trade files for many years. The most talked about types of files are Movies and MP3s. As of late, the RIAA and MPAA have started cracking down on these peer to peer networks because of the illegal file sharing that was going on. At this point, some may be unaware as to what a Peer to Peer network is. Here is a brief breakdown.

P2P networks are a pretty cool invention. Initially it was networks like Kazaa, Napster, and Morpheus that worked like this: Person A has a file and he shares that with person 1, 2, and 3. Once person 1, 2, and 3 have the file they begin to share the file too. Now 4 people are sharing the file, and as a result the download of these file to subsequent users goes faster because there are more sources for the file. Initially this was a great network. Things were fairly fast and you could get most of anything you could want. But soon these networks became infested with viruses and different forms of spyware/adware and downloads also became excruciatingly slow. Soon a new type of P2P network came about known as Bit Torrent. This was a nice improvement on the already existing P2P structure. The main difference here is that you start by connecting to a specific tracker which is a file on the internet that points you to the actual file and seed. A seed is someone who has the whole file(s). Then you have what is called the leech. They are the people without the file that are just downloading the file. Unlike the older P2P networks, when using Bit Torrent everyone is sharing at the same time. Not only is the Seed sharing, whoever is downloading is also sharing while they are downloading. This results in much faster download speeds. However, soon the Bit Torrent network became clogged and in many cases pretty slow. You can sometimes find pretty good speeds, but there usually has to be quite a bit of seeds for this to work. Of course this really does vary for a few reasons. This will be explained in a second, but first there has to be one thing that has to be understood.

P2P networks are a great tool, especially the Bit Torrent side of things. But most people need to understand that there are much better and more legal uses for Bit Torrent. Bit Torrent is a great way to get out software/media out there to the masses at a much quicker rate. When you download from a fully legal torrent, your speeds tend to be much faster than those on the illegal side. That's why it is a great piece of technology. Large files can be sent at a fairly quick rate and not clog up company servers. My favorite use is to get music from bands that allow live taping at their shows (Phish, Grateful Dead, Phil Lesh and Friend's, String Cheese Incident and more). A great place for this is Etree's Bit Torrent website http://bt.etree.org. As a result, I'm never short of any good music and never have to worry about the RIAA coming after me. In some ways it's a great sigh of releif. Some software manufacturers have also realized the beauty of Bit Torrent and have had that as an option for distributing their programs once purchased. The Linux community has fully embraced the Bit Torrent concept and uses that widely to distribute the different builds of the operating system. For more info visit http://linuxiso.org. The point is that Bit Torrent has great legal uses and is a wonderful technology that more people are starting to embrace.

Of course, there are many people out there that use Bit Torrent for the questionable uses. And one thing that has to always be on their minds is "Who is watching me?". The truth is quite astounding and the Torrent network is being watched quite heavily. But there are ways to prevent them from looking at you. A simple program called Peer Guardian (Http://methlabs.org/projects) can protect you from the prying eyes of the RIAA and MPAA. It's mainly just a question of privacy. Though Peer Guardian may not be 100% effective, it's still a heavy barrier for them to get through and that's sufficient enough for now.

For more information on any of these things talked about in this article, please post any questions in the comments area. And for the Bit Torrent program my favorite, and probably the most popular client is Azureus (http://azureus.sourceforge.net) Finding torrents is something I leave up to you the reader (at least those that deal with questionable).
The main caveats I will bring here is just be careful what you download. Always make sure that your Virus Scanning software is up to date and will scan the file as it is being downloaded. Also, unless you want to take the risk, stay away from the P2P networks especially those of Kazaa, Bear Share, Ares, Emile, etc... It's really not worth it. The technology should be used with caution and care. Other than that. Happy downloading!