What Is Seed?
A seed is like a parent, and a leech is like a child. A seed holds the entire file in its computer and shares it with other users. A leech takes what it can from the file and does not give anything back. Think of it this way: if you are seeding your favorite movie, you are letting people watch it in its entirety, but if you are leeching, you are just watching half of it and skipping out on the rest. The difference between a seed and a leech is between sharing and stealing. Seeds are the good guys. They upload their whole file to the BitTorrent network so other users can download it. You are not just getting a copy of the file when downloading something from a seed. You are also helping fund it for everyone else on the network! Leeches are the bad guys. They take advantage of the seeds' generosity by downloading files from them without uploading anything in return. You might think this is harmless piracy, but when you are leeching content from others, you are stealing bandwidth from them and slowing down their computers! So remember: seeds share; leeches steal. To understand torrent speed, you must understand the concept of a "peer."Peers are users downloading a file, have part of it, yet are simultaneously uploading the downloaded piece to other users. Even though the peers share back the files simultaneously, the torrent speed depends on the number of seeders available for the shared file. A seeder has downloaded a file and is sharing it with others. A leecher wants to download a file but still needs to complete it. Seeders are responsible for uploading parts of a file to leechers so that leechers can continue downloading. Leechers also upload details back to seeders so that seeders do not have to wait for them all day long!
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