[Kinanizer]

Legal Disclaimer: This tutorial is not meant to promote illegal torrenting. It is intended for legal torrents such as the ones the Linux distro Backtrack uses.

What is a torrent file?

A torrent file is a computer file that contains metadata about the files to be shared and about the tracker, the computer that coordinates the file distribution.

In laymen terms, a torrent is a file that includes instructions for a peer to peer download. You may be wondering what makes this different from downloading from a server. Well with a torrent you can have more then one peer and download much quicker. These people who help you by uploading the file to your machine are called seeders. Many people have given torrents a negative connotation because this is an easy way to distribute cracked programs or viruses. Personally though, I prefer a torrent and I'm always seeding for my fellow torrent supporters.

How do I torrent?
Well first you will need a torrenting program. The 2 most popular are uTorrent and BitTorrent. Personaly I use uTorrent, and I recomend it to you based on this poll. So once you have that installed then you need to find a ".torrent" file. So let's head over to backtrack-linux.org and click download. Choose the torrent and download it. This is what should of happened:

Spoiler:

Now we can run that 2 ways, double clicking it or opening it in our torrenting program. This is the process for uTorrent:

Spoiler:

Now whether you double clicked or added it you will see:

Spoiler:

Once you've finished filling out your options click "OK". Now you should see something like this:

Spoiler:

Now let's go through the row highlighted in blue. First we see the name you gave the torrent, and the size right next to it. Then we see the status of the download, this is given in a percent and goes to 100% (that should be obvious). Health has never been a problem for me, so I had to look around to find out what it was:

Health displays 0-5 bars that indicate the availability of the torrent using: this formula - log2(Availability). I.e. distributed copies being 1 = 1 bar, 2 = 2 bars , 4 = 3 bars, 8 = 4 bars and 16 = 5 bars.

Next we see are down/up speeds. The "Down" speed is how fast your downloading and the "Up" speed is how fast your seeding. Now we come to the ETA, this is how long until the file is completely downloaded. Next we see the rating you have given. Not many people use this feature, but if you want to go ahead. Finally is the ratio of seeders to peers. Once completed your "Status" bar will say "Seeding". I highly recommend you seed. without seeders torrents could never survive.

Staying anonymous
Wait a minuet I thought you said this TUT was for legal purposes? Well it is, but if you look in the picture of me downloading the torrent you will see a bunch of IPs. These are the IP's of other peers and seeders. Most people have a problem advertising their IP, so here is a link to the VPN I use. Do not use Tor, reason:

Under no circumstances is it safe to use BitTorrent and Tor together, however.

Thank you for reading, if you have any questions then just ask.

[Bannedshee]

I don't think anyone needs a torrenting tutorial but its useful to noobs. Anyway great share, very HQ and very detailed!

[Kinanizer]

I don't think anyone needs a torrenting tutorial but its useful to noobs. Anyway great share, very HQ and very detailed!

Thank you, I put a lot of work into this.

[Bannedshee]

I don't think anyone needs a torrenting tutorial but its useful to noobs. Anyway great share, very HQ and very detailed!

Thank you, I put a lot of work into this.

Judging by the amount of detail and quality, I'm sure you did.

[workaholics]

Good high quality post! Even though you can use tor its just the tor relay people they get the copyright infringement you can use tor for it, they ask that you don't.

[Kinanizer]

Good high quality post! Even though you can use tor its just the tor relay people they get the copyright infringement you can use tor for it, they ask that you don't.

In the event that your caught torrenting on Tor, the logs will be handed right over to the feds. So It's not really to secure to.

[w00t]

That's not why you shouldn't use tor with torrents.

[Kinanizer]

That's not why you shouldn't use tor with torrents.

Then please share your wisdom.

[w00t]

First, a lot of torrent programs ignore proxy settings, due to tor being tcp-only and torrent being a UDP protocol. Even without that, torrents weren't designed to be anonymity-minded, and a lot of clients send your real IP to the trackers, even if this data is correctly proxied.

Second, and this is in conjunction with the first, a malicious end node can easily determine the source IP of the client, so if you browse the web and torrent on the same circut, your browsing session is blown as well.

Though you could have just googled it.

[Kinanizer]

First, a lot of torrent programs ignore proxy settings, due to tor being tcp-only and torrent being a UDP protocol. Even without that, torrents weren't designed to be anonymity-minded, and a lot of clients send your real IP to the trackers, even if this data is correctly proxied.

Second, and this is in conjunction with the first, a malicious end node can easily determine the source IP of the client, so if you browse the web and torrent on the same circut, your browsing session is blown as well.

Though you could have just googled it.

The torrenting program i recommended, uTorrent, does allow proxies, and I didn't bother to Google it because I don't use Tor anyway. Although thank you for the information, may I update the OP with your quote?