What is a torrent?
Torrent is a peer to peer file sharing protocol. This means that it does not require the file to be present at any central location; rather the file can be present at a user’s system and can be downloaded from there itself.
To allow sharing of files, some users create a small file which contains all the information needed to download the file for which it was created. The information includes name of the file, its size, where to download it from etc. To run a download using a torrent protocol, you need to install what is called a BitTorrent client.
Torrents: A brief history
Torrents first came to picture in 2001. It was developed by a programmer Bram Cohem who later founded the company BitTorrent Inc. with Ashwin Navin in 2004. BitTorrent is responsible for peer-assisted Internet content delivery technology based on the BitTorrent protocol and maintaining the BitTorrent protocol.
The BitTorrent client has been made open source. Today, a significant chunk of Internet traffic is because of file transfers using torrent protocol.