Things from my mind..

Torrent Terminology for Newbies

announce url
The website address your bittorrent client uses to connect to a tracker in order to get peer data (ie. http://example.no-ip.com:6969/announce), when you make a torrent, make sure you use the announce url of the site you want to upload your torrent to.

availability
(also distributed copies) The number of full copies of the file available to the client. Each seed adds 1.0 to this number, as they have one complete copy of the file. A connected peer with a fraction of the file available adds that fraction to the availability, if no other peer has this part of the file. (ie. a peer with 65.3% of the file downloaded increases the availability by 0.653. However, if two peers both have the same portion of the file downloaded - say 50% - and there is only one seeder, the availability is 1.5).

choked
Describes a peer to whom the client refuses to send file pieces. A client chokes another client in several situations:

* The second client is a seed, in which case it does not want any pieces(ie. it is completely uninterested)
* The client is already uploading at its full capacity (ie. the value for max_uploads has been reached)

client
The program that enables p2p file sharing via the BitTorrent protocol. Examples of clients include µTorrent and Azureus.

downloader
A downloader is any peer that does not have the entire file and is downloading the file. This term is used in Bram Cohen's Python implementation, and lacks the negative connotation attributed to leech. Bram prefers downloader to leech because BitTorrent's tit-for-tat ensures downloaders also upload and thus should not be unfairly branded leech.

hash
The hash is a string of alphanumeric characters in the .torrent file that the client uses to verify the data that is being transferred. It contains information like the file list, sizes, pieces, etc. Every piece received is first checked against the hash. If it fails verification, the data is discarded and requested again. The 'Hash Fails' field in the torrent General tab shows the number of these hash fails.

Hit 'n run
Closing down your torrent immediatly after you finish your download, this is very selfish and can and will get you banned from many sites. To avoid getting banned, try to always seed to 1:1 ratio (upload as much MB as you have downloaded from a certain torrent) and keep uploading at least a few hours after you have completely finished downloading your file

index
An index is a list of .torrent files (usually including descriptions and other information) managed by a website and available for searches. An index website can also be a tracker.

interested
Describes a downloader who wishes to obtain pieces of a file the client has. For example, the uploading client would flag a downloading client as 'interested' if that client did not possess a piece that it did, and wished to obtain it.

Leecher
Someone who is downloading a file but hasn't finished it yet.

lurker
A lurker is a user that only downloads files from the group but does not add new content. Unlike a leech, a lurker will seed what he has downloaded.

p2p
Stands for "peer to peer" which is the technology used for file sharing among computer users over the internet.

peer
A peer is one instance of a BitTorrent client running on a computer on the Internet to which other clients connect and transfer data. Usually a peer does not have the complete file, but only parts of it. However, in the colloquial definition, "peer" can be used to refer to any participant in the swarm (in this case, it's synonymous with "client").

piece
This refers to the torrented files being divided up into equal specific sized pieces (ie 512Kb, 1Mb). The pieces are distributed in a random fashion among peers in order to optimize trading efficiency.

Reseed
If someone seeds a torrent again after they had already finished and closed it earlier. This is done when a torrent has leechers, but no seeder. It's a great way to help out the community. It reactivates the torrent so others can now finish their download and then seed.

If you want to reseed a file, just start the torrent again and download the file to the same directory on your PC where you have your complete copy. Bittorrent will then check your existing data, find that you already have the complete file and then you'll just upload (seed).

scrape
This is when a client sends a request to the tracking server for information about the statistics of the torrent, such as with whom to share the file and how well those other users are sharing.

Seeder
Someone who makes the torrent, puts it on a tracker/website and uploads the file with bittorrent to the downloaders. Or someone who has completely downloaded a file and is now only uploading that file, this is called seeding.

share ratio
A user's share ratio for any individual torrent is a number determined by dividing the amount of data that user has uploaded by the amount of data they have downloaded. Final share ratios over 1 carry a positive connotation in the BitTorrent community because they indicate that the user has sent more data to other users than they received. Likewise, share ratios under 1 have a negative connotation.

snubbed
An uploading client is flagged as snubbed if the downloading client has not received any data from it in over 60 seconds.

super-seeding
When a file is new, much time can be wasted because the seeding client might send the same file piece to many different peers, while other pieces have not yet been downloaded at all. Some clients, like ABC, Azureus, BitTornado, TorrentStorm, and µTorrent have a "superseed" mode, where they try to only send out pieces that have never been sent out before, theoretically making the initial propagation of the file much faster. However the super-seeding becomes substantially less effective and may even reduce performance compared to the normal "rarest first" model in cases where some peers have poor or limited connectivity. This mode is generally used only for a new torrent, or one which must be re-seeded because no other seeds are available.

swarm
Together, all peers (including seeders) sharing a torrent are called a swarm. For example, six ordinary peers and two seeders make a swarm of eight.

torrent
Small text file that points to a certain tracker and a certain file for downloading with bittorrent.

tracker
A tracker is a server that keeps track of which seeds and peers are in the swarm. Clients report information to the tracker periodically and in exchange receive information about other clients to which they can connect. The tracker is not directly involved in the data transfer and does not have a copy of the file.