Over the last few years, torrents have become the world’s favorite way of sharing information on the Internet. Millions of people still use other networks, and the Ares Network in particular has a few special benefits for its users, but the torrent community has without a doubt become by far the biggest community of networked peers that the world has ever seen.

Ares Galaxy has been on top of this trend for years and has had built-in torrent support for a long time now. Read on to learn more about the torrent technology and how to use it on Ares.

What Is BitTorrent?

Like the Ares protocol, BitTorrent is a P2P protocol for sharing data over the Internet. According to the company that developed the technology back in the early 2000s, there are now over 150 million people who actively use torrents to share files with other people.

The use of torrents is so widespread that some estimate that, at any given moment, it is likely that there are more people who are using torrents, than there are people who are actively using YouTube or Facebook!

The word “BitTorrent” refers to the protocol that is used through which data is requested and transmitted. This protocol can be run by a variety of torrent clients, among which are uTorrent, Azureus and, of course, Ares Galaxy.

How It Works

Someone who wants to share files with the whole network creates a file, which is called a “torrent”. This file contains metadata and details which files are to be shared and through which computer/tracker they will be distributed.

The other peers then connect to the correct tracker, through which they are referred to the peer or peers who have the file in storage.  The file gets transferred to the other peers while split up into small pieces, so people can more easily connect to several peers simultaneously.

How It Works On Ares Galaxy

That’s how it works behind the scenes. But how do you use Ares Galaxy to download and share torrents?

Unlike Ares Galaxy, BitTorrent is nothing more than a protocol, so there is no specific search function through which you can search the entire network. And, in fact, there is not just one “network”, but hundreds, if not thousands, of different trackers, which can be searched for the specific files you need.

What Ares Galaxy does as a torrent client is the following: it can open torrent (or magnet) files, load the tracker information and then act as the “middle man” between you and the tracker. But, to find the files you need, you’ll have to locate them yourself on the tracker of your choice.

There are many of these trackers available and a quick google search should find you a collection of both free and registration-only ones, each with their own search-options.

When you find the file you need, just download the small torrent file and open it with Ares Galaxy. Ares should start connecting immediately and after less than a minute, it will begin downloading. Once the download has been finished, it will automatically start “seeding”. You will continue to seed (share) the file with the other users on the tracker until you remove the file or until you cancel the upload.