Difference Between Seeds and Peers

Seeds vs Peers

Torrents have become the newest and best among the file sharing networks. With torrents, there is no centralized servers where the files can be downloaded from. Instead, the files are copied from other users who have portions of the file or the entirety. Seeds are basically copies of the entire file that has been placed so that other downloaders have a source. Peers are the people who are also downloading the file. They may already have portions of the file or none at all.

In general, the number of seeds and peers are directly correlated to how fast you can download a file. The more seeds mean that you can download files much faster since you have more sources to concurrently download from. With peers, it’s the opposite. More peers mean that there are more people who are competing for the bandwidth provided by all the seeders. Although peers may be downloading the file, they may also offset the download bandwidth that they consume because other people can also download the sections of the files that they already have, thereby alleviating the consumption of the bandwidth of the seeders. But as an overall rule, a torrent with more seeders than peers will have better speeds than a torrent with fewer seeders than peers.

Whether a person is a peer or a seeder does not always stay fixed as you become a seeder right after you finish downloading. Seeding is a practice that is greatly encouraged in the file sharing community as it not only allows other people to download, it also makes it a lot faster for everyone else. Seeds would not really impact you that much as it does not take-up any downstream bandwidth, only the upstream. You can also limit the upstream bandwidth that your torrent software takes so that you do not experience any problem with real-time software like VoIP and online games.

Lastly, take note of the copyrights that are associated with the materials that you are downloading. Copyright infringement is a crime punishable by law. And the penalties can be very heavy. Anything that you need to pay for is usually copyrighted and downloading them for free is something to avoid.

Summary:

1. Seeds are complete copies of the file wile peers are those who are still downloading the file

2. More seeds mean faster than downloads while more peers mean slower downloads

3. Peers who do not remove the file after downloading it becomes seeders

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