Here is my attempt at a simple BT dictionary. A lot of the BT glossaries out there are hard to understand for someone new to BT, or simply outdated, so I'm trying to make a more newb-friendly one. It is a work in progress, so I would really appreciate corrections and new suggestions for words not yet added. Do it for the newbs!
Source: My own (non-comprehensive) knowledge, misc websites, wikipedia, users like you
Q: What is bittorrent?
A: Google it. There are lots of easy to understand explanations out there, and they're all much better than anything I could write up.
Bittorrent Terminology:
Torrent: A .torrent file is a file that contains the basic information about a file or set of files, plus everything that makes it downloadable. Open it with a bittorrent client to get the file!
Tracker: A server that keeps track of bittorrent clients. You don't download anything from the tracker, it just helps different users talk to each other and exchange pieces of the file!
Seed: Someone that's finished downloading the file. They only upload.
Peer/leech: Someone downloading and uploading the file at the same time. A leecher can also mean someone that only downloads without sharing back. This is bad!
Swarm: A group of users (seeders and leechers) connected to each other, sharing the same torrent. Like the super friends, only without the crime fighting. For exampke, if your bittorrent client tells you that you're connected to 6 peers and 2 seeds, your swarm is made up of you and those 8 other people.
Scrape: It tells your client how many seeds and peers are in the whole swarm, not just those you are connected to. When you see seeds 10 (25) and peers 12 (18), the numbers in brackets are coming from scrape. You would be connected to 10 out of a possible 25 seeds. (Thanks rvt!)
Share ratio: How much you've uploaded, divided by how much you've downloaded. A share ratio of 1.0 means you've uploaded as much as you've downloaded. It is considered common courtesy to upload at least as much as you download. Help everyone, not just yourself!
Hit and Run: Hit and Run is when a user doesn't seed back after finishing their download. This hurts everyone else and can hurt you too, depending on your tracker!
DHT: Distributed Hash Table, a feature that some BT (bittorrent) clients have. It allows them to find other peers and host a torrent without a tracker. Basically, it lets your swarm to continue as normal without a tracker (in case it goes down or something).
Public tracker: Trackers anyone can use. You may have to register, but there's never a user limit. Often lists torrents from multiple sites.
Private tracker: Trackers that require registration, and limits its number of users. Considered "safer" than public trackers, and known for higher speeds as well as more/specific content.
Snatched: How many times a torrent has been completed. Usually seen on private trackers.
Pretime: Pretime is the time a release (movies, games, music, etc.) appears on the internet for the first time. Private torrent sites try to make the releases available as fast as possible, often only minutes after the original pretime.
In bittorrent talk, the term "tracker pretime" describes the gap between the original pretime and the tracker release time. (Thanks for the definition, polarbear!)
NFO: A text file that often accompanies torrents. They contain information about the file! Viewed with a text editor or dedicated .nfo viewer.
Reseed: Sometimes, a torrent is left with zero seeders. All peers will eventually get stuck with an incomplete file, and someone with a complete copy of the file must "reseed" so others can finish their download.
PeerGuardian: A free, open-source program that filters out specific IP addresses for P2P users. Believed by some to lower your chances of being caught by anti-piracy groups.
That's all for now. Taking suggestions!
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Detale
Bookmarks