BitTorrent
BitTorrent – is an peer-to-peer network protocol for sharing corporate files via Internet. The principle of the work of this protocol is the following. A file (a group of files) owned by the initial distributor (the 'seed') is divided into thousands of pieces by means of special software which is called a bittorent client and these pieces are downloaded by other users that are called 'peers'. While downloading the whole file (the group of files) each peer simultaneously seeds them to other peers, and when the downloading is completed a peer becomes another seed. The more seeds there are, the faster the file will be downloaded by other clients. This arrangement makes it possible to reduce the load on the initial distributor and has an advantage over traditional hosting systems where one file is downloaded by multiple users (sometimes thousands of users) thus creating great load on the server which may eventually lead to the server breakdown. In bittorrent systems the traffic of each client is minimized, and at the same time the maximum speed of download may be reached if there are many seeds or peers of the file. The first bit-torrent client was created by Bram Cohen in 2001 and since then tens of other clients working with this protocol have been created. Bram Cohen founded a company, BitTorrent, Inc, which now develops and maintains software for peer-to-peer networks. It's been calculated that the amount of traffic that's now shared via bittorent protocol is approximately 35% of all internet traffic in the world.