Torrent terminology

Pt. 5 of 5 | 3:01 |

An introduction to torrents

Friday July 2, 2010

If you're going to be

using your torrent application

and

downloading torrents

frequently, you'll want to know some of the lingo that's commonly used. Words like seed, peer, tracker and leech are words that you've undoubtedly heard before, but in the world of torrents they may be used in a different context. In this episode, we will go over some of the more

common torrent terms

and tell you what they mean and how they apply to you.

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Show Notes

Here are some of the more common torrent terms.

Seed: Another name for a torrent user. A "seeder" has successfully downloaded the file and is now sharing it with peers.

Peer: The term used to denote every person or user that's downloading. A peer does not have the complete file. Once a peer has completed the download, they can become a seed.

Leech: Almost used interchangeably with peer. The one difference is that a real leech has a low UD ratio.

UD Ratio: is the Upload to Download Ratio. Since a principle behind torrents is to share, you try to keep your UD Ratio close to 1. That would mean that your downloads equal your uploads.

Tracker: A term used for a server that coordinates all of the torrent downloads and users.

Swarm: A term used to refer to everyone connected to a tracker.

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