Bittorrent Questions....

[GameDork]

How in the world does this work and is it safe t use? I mean, can anybody find out who you are?

I had no idea about this!! Is it easy?

[Dave_K.]

Bittorent is a P2P client downloading tool that shares the file out to a P2P network "as you are downloading it".  What this means is, the more people downloading it at the same time, the faster download times for everyone.  The normal P2P caveats apply....if you use it to download pirated software, you can be tracked just like any other tool.  I mostly see bittorents used for legal/demo software and love the fast download times.

Finding a linux client (and installing it) was a little troubling, but once its all setup (with the mime type set in your browser)...all you do is click on a torrent link to start downloading.  

[abrannan]

As far as anybody finding out who you are, BitTorrent was not designed as an anonymous p2p network (think Kazaa, eDonkey, Overnet, etc.)  BitTorrent is a way of sharing the load for mass downloading of files.  So rather than having Red Hat's servers be crushed every time they release a new version of Red Hat Linux, they put up a torrent and as people download a bit from Red Hat, they're also uploading the bits they've downloaded to other people.  That way, Red Hat doesn't have to pay obscenely high bandwidth charges, and people can download what they want faster.  

If you read the information at bitconjurer.org, it gives a little bit more explanation.