#13: Torrents

One of the most successful ways of transferring information to many users very cheaply is through a P2P (Peer To Peer) protocol called Torrents (.torrent is the extension). In torrents, there are seeders (those who share the full file) and leechers (those who are downloading the file). The torrent protocol allows you to share your bandwidth to help spread files to other users, thereby lowering the strain on servers who offer these files to users.

For example, I share all of the Ubuntu torrents, and I would highly recommend you share Ubuntu as well if you love it just as much as I do. This will also help save Canonical (the company which works on Ubuntu) much money in server and bandwidth costs. It will also help save money from the sites which help mirror Ubuntu downloads as well.

Ubuntu has a torrent program installed by default called Transmission, and it is a decent program which you can use if you want, but I recommend using a torrent program called Deluge. I would search for it on Synaptic Package Manager (System -> Administrator -> Synaptic Package Manager), search for deluge, and install it.

I would recommend before helping upload Ubuntu through torrents, to test your internet connection so Deluge can be set up correctly. Speed Tests can be run here:

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest

After running your speed test, you should get a download speed and an upload speed. What is important here is just the upload speed, which is in Kbps (Kilobits per second), you will want to convert this number into KBps (Kilobytes per second), so open up calculator, and divide the upload number by 8 in order to get how many KBps your upload connection is, now multiply this number by .7 (70%) in order to get a nice upload speed while leaving enough breathing room for surfing the interwebs.

You will now want to find .torrent files of Ubuntu, which can be found on Ubuntu's website here:

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/downloadmirrors#bt

You can download whichever versions you like, share them all if you want to (I highly recommend it). If you are low on space though, or do not want to take up too much, just share the desktop-i386 version.

After downloading all the .torrent files, find them on your computer, right click, and press "Open with... Deluge". Add the torrents, and you will begin downloading them. Once Deluge is open, push Edit -> Preferences -> Bandwidth, and set the upload limit to the number you computed earlier.

If you want to learn more about Deluge, you may look around their website which is here:

http://deluge-torrent.org/