What are torrents?

Torrents is basically a concept of sharing files among the people who have it(called as peers in the world of torrents). The working of torrents is very simple. A person has a file(generally a movie file that we are interested in) and decides to share. He creates a torrent file with the file to be shared as source. Any software like bittorrent and utorrent let us create such torrents. More, u can also create torrents on websites like www.mininova.org .. every torrent is supposed to have a tracker list. These trackers are generally website addresses that are dedicated for torrents, like piratebay etc. these trackers generally provide the list of people who are sharing it
realtime for the other users to know. This info from the trackers are understood and suitably used by torrent softwares like bitorrent and utorrent. Basically, the trackers keep updating their list of peers sharing the file every few seconds(automated obviously!!). once the torrent is so created, the user uploads it in various forums or torrent sites where other users can download and open with the torrent softwares. As every user starts downloading, he as well uploads the part he has already downloaded. Generally a movie of 700 MB size is split up into 700 parts or so when torrent is created(though not visible to the user). Now, as every user downloads at least one part, he begins to share this part for other users who don’t have that part of the file. So the number keeps multiplying and ultimately, we get the maximum speed possible if the file we are downloading is a very famous one. Generally in India(with a 2MBPS connection), a 700 MBEnglish latest movie file is downloaded in hardly 2 hours. The major advantage of torrents is that only legitimate files are shared by thousands of users. So any infected file being uploaded dies almost immediately once the users realise it and is hardly shared. Some terms used with torrents:

Peers: total number of users sharing a particular file
Leechers: people who do not have the complete file and are just downloading from other users. But ya, they do upload a part of wat they have downloaded
Trackers: a set of automated sites that provide info to the torrent softwares on the users who are sharing the files and where to find them(with IP addresses).

Warning: there are options to limit ur bandwidth for uploading. But if u only download without uploading, the trackers tend to block ur ip from further downloads and basically ban u from torrent society. So ensure u can as much as give what u download. :)