(OT) Bit Torrent usage ...

[Phil Schaffner]

On Wed, 2005-07-27 at 16:21 -0400, Ugo Bellavance wrote:
> Mike McCarty wrote:
> > I see that the Red Hat site suggests Bit Torrent.
> > 
> > I went to the website, and I don't see where it would
> > help. And I don't understand the bit about "if you don't
> > allow Bit Torrent to upload from your machine, you won't
> > get improved download rates."
> > 
> > They specifically state that it is a means for publishing
> > things from one's own machine to the world.
> > 
> > Can anyone explain, in ordinary language, what possible
> > advantage it would give me over, say, wget?
> > 
> > Mike
> 
> The most obvious advantage is not for you.  It is that Bit Torrent uses
> everyone's bandwidth instead of only using the mirror's (which is costly).
> 
> Bittorrent only "publish" the files you want to publish.

It can give better effective bandwidth for you on the download by
getting data from a number of peers rather than from a single server
with limited IO capacity and bandwidth.  It is also good form to leave
your client open after the download finishes to "give back" to the
community by sharing your bandwidth.

Phil