(OT) Bit Torrent usage ...

[STYMA, ROBERT E (ROBERT)]

> 
> Can anyone explain, in ordinary language, what possible
> advantage it would give me over, say, wget?
> 
The article Alexander mentioned is very good.  However.

Consider the following.  The new Fedora comes out and all the 
mirrors begin getting hammered.  Bittorrent logically breaks
the big file(s) into a bunch of little pieces.  Your first piece
is not block one, but a random block.  The same goes for everyone
else.  Now you go to get the next piece which was the piece
someone else got first.  You can get that piece faster from the
other person than from the hammered original mirror.  This decreases
the load on the original mirror.  This is also handy for the
purveyor of the original mirror since some ISP's charge a premium
if your download goes over a certain amount.  

There are a bunch of checksums and tit for tat rules which balance
the load across the peers.  These are discussed very well in the article.
Hope this answers the question. 

Bob Styma