Over a month ago, we wrote about the latest craze in filesharing, Bit Torrent; a technology that has since exploded in popularity. At the time of our initial report, many people had never heard of the technology. Many still haven't, but in just over a month, the usage of that application has exploded and can be seen everywhere. Several websites are now up (and stable) offering a myriad of guides to what's being shared out there. So what's so great about Bit Torrent? What's so different about it from any other filesharing application?

First, there's no searching services built into Bit Torrent. When you find a file, you're nearly guaranteed that it's going to contain the content you asked for. You very rarely (if ever) fall victim to the corrupted/fake file syndrome that you see on many other peer-to-peer programs, eliminating a major headache. There are, however, a few file-sharing applications (E.G. Shareaza) out there that will search for torrents, as well as many other popular file-sharing extensions, but you eventually fall victim to falsification of files again.

Secondly, BT rewards those who upload while they're downloading. As soon as you start downloading a part of your file, you immediately begin to start uploading what you have to other people around the internet. This means that files can be shared faster, because you don't have to wait for someone to have a completed file in order to download from them. There are ways to disable the uploading, but in situations where available upload bandwidth is limited, Bit Torrent will give the uploaders greater priority on their downloads than the leechers.

Some large websites, especially those distributing linux and linux components, have adopted the Bit Torrent technology. This has vastly increased download performance while decreasing bandwidth costs at the same time. Now, much smaller sites have the ability to spread their files across the internet without having to worry about hundreds and thousands of dollars of bandwidth charges each month. Even some IRC channels have been using BT to distribute their files. The anime scene was one of the first to start distributing files and so far it's been a huge success. More people can be served, and they can be served much faster.

Our filesharing forum has helped dozens of users to get online with Bit Torrent.

The technology's creator, Bram Cohen, says that his "attempts to promote BitTorrent for any specific purpose basically failed", but that he hopes the technology can still find a viable place on the internet. Cohen addressed several questions, including his feelings on piracy, in a recent Slashdot Interview.

So far the technology sounds great; but what's the catch? Many people still love the simplicity of a one-two click/GUI based search technology. There's no doubt that Bit Torrent requires a little more technical knowledge than many of the other filesharing applications. Also, as is being discussed in our forums, Bit Torrent doesn't make you invulnerable from the large agencies that try to crack down on copyright infringement and piracy.

You're just as likely to receive your fair share of attorney nasty-grams if you choose to downloaded pirated content. There's certainly no doubt that a good chunk of the files that are distributed are of the illegal type, but there is certainly a lot more practical and legal uses for it then most other file-sharing applications.

Bit Torrent doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon, and as more people use it, the technology should improve. This is one of the few file-sharing applications that provides a higher quality of performance for everyone as its user base increases.

Broadband Reports user Archivis contributed heavily to this report