Even if you have some low-demand content, bittorrent is at worst as fast as normal hosting. As soon as the demand exceeds your available bandwidth bittorrent will always be faster. That is, the total download speed for all your clients will be larger than using other methods. A single client might not get what they want at the optimal speed, but nobody needs to agonize over queues or nonresponsive hosts. Even if your original seed host goes down, all of your clients can continue downloading the parts that someone managed to download. If you hosted the files normally, the total download speed would drop to zero if your original host went down.

The only weak point in bittorrent is the tracker. If the tracker goes down, discovering peers and establishing new connections will be difficult. However, some clients (like Azureus) can set up their own distributed tracker automatically if the original tracker goes down.

And for the record: the bittorrent protocol is freeware, and if you don't like installing "fishy" bittorrent software, there's plenty of open source alternatives available. As much as you might want to blame bittorrent for your crash, it probably wasn't the culprit.
 

One more thing: Bittorrent is a tool, just like a crowbar. It in itself is not illegal, but the user might be a criminal depending on what he does with it. If you host a file that you're not authorised to distribute by either the author himself or your local fair use laws, the method of distribution is irrelevant. It's the act that's illegal, not the means you use.
 

BT download speed is based on the sum of upload speed of every seeder plus the sum of upload speed of downloaders... all divided by the number of downloaders.

Direct download speed is based on the total upload speed of the server divided by how many are downloading.

Now to compare that you can consider that upload speed of a server is like a seeder provided by a website.... so if content provider is a good one, you should be able to download at least as fast as direct download.

All depends on how you use BT technology....
For example Blizzard use it in a different way than the standard and is slow by design. But if you extrapolate the .torrent from a blizzard downloader and use it with a standard BT client... it will cap your download speed in less half a minute.
 

That sounds fine in theory. But I do know how much time I need to download X gigabytes directly from a site with a good server. And the Bittorrent download of the PotBS software is way slower. And downloading a Blizzard patch is even slower.

Now that might be because I ignore messages saying "downloads are slow, please turn off your firewall". But if I turn off my firewall or punch lots of holes (ports) into it, I'm leaving myself wide open to all sorts of attacks.
 

Having a firewall will inpact only partly on your performance.
I won't turn off firewall and only eventually would just change settings to allow software to get thru firewall (but anyway firewall is a must and need to be always active).

Just to explain how it works...
If you have a firewall, you controll 2 different types of traffic. Incoming and outgoing. (Incoming is traffic that starts from someone in internet, Outgoung is traffic that starts from you).
Once a comunication between two computer is setup, data will be able to flow in both direction.
Is like a phone call. Once both pickup the phone, both can chat freely.

Now if you have a firewall you'll let obviously to call outside (from your computer) or you'll be out of internet and nothing will work.
Speaking on phone example... is like being able to pickup your phone and call anyone you want.

What firewall does usually is block any incoming data connection that is potentially unknown. Speaking with phone examples... is like blocking any incoming call that reach your phone.

Eventually you can setup a white list, that is like telling your phone that some incoming calls can be accepted.

Now BT (any P2P technoloty) need to estabilish a lot of connections to get more speed.
Having a firewall will inpact in part as two computers with a firewall can't call each other.
Like two friends that won't be able to phone each other if both block incoming calls. Each can call the other one, but each one will block incoming calls.

But if you are under firewall you'll still be able to connect or receive connection from everyone isn't behind a firewall.

Hey, just now I see someone saying... "stop a second, why a firewall can be tricked by BT and let receive a connection... shouldn't block any incoming one!?"

The fact is that if user A blocks any incoming connection and user B want to connect to user A (may be user B is ready to send him some block of the file)... User B sends a request to the server (tracker) asking it to send the message to user A. So that user A (under firewall) can open a connection (outgoing) to user B (that don't block incoming connections).

Back to phone example....
I want to call Tobold but his line block incoming calls or is busy. So I call someone that know him in person and ask to forward a message to call me.

Anyway....
beside the tech part....

I think that main problem with torrent speed isn't technology di per se. Is that many companies tend to see such delivery method as a panacea to server and internet expenditures. Distributing using P2P techlonogy doesn't mean that there's no need of a good server. The difference is that if there's a burst of downloaders, they don't be inpacted as much as with a direct download.
 

If it is any comfort Tobold, the developers of Bit Torrent have turned to focus on commercial use of Bit Torrent and developing strategies for the business world.

The "crowbar is a tool" example is perfect.

Also, you could replace Bit Torrent in your post with MMORPGs and say you won't play MMORPGs because some people are "farming gold" and you don't support that now do you? Point being, it is what YOU use the service for, not what others do that matters.

Chances are, most websites you would choose to download from are slowly transitioning towards torrents. Straight-up downloading will be a thing of the past sooner than later for larger files.

Oh and having WoW installed means you have Bit Torrent installed :P There are tons of Bit Torrent programs that are 100% safe when downloading SAFE torrents. I suggest doing a Google for utorrent, the smallest, most efficient torrent client I've ever used. Plus, they have tons of guides to help you get through problems.

Firewalls mean little to P2P traffic. It is usually routers, modems, or ISPs that cause the problems.
 

The Opera web browser includes BitTorrent capabilities.