How To Magnet Links With Vuze

24-05-2021

How To Magnet Links With Vuze

How To Associate Magnet Links With Vuze
Best Torrent Magnet Sites

Soon, popular torrent site The Pirate Bay will no longer host torrent files. Instead, it will only offer magnet links. Magnet what now? You may have seen the term 'magnet link' before, but if you haven't used one, here's the lowdown on what this change means for you as a BitTorrent user.

How To Turn A Magnet Link Into A Torrent File. You need to use a third-party program to do so. Torrage - Currently offline because of the Piratebay Raid. TorrentCaching - Works similar to Torcache. While you can upload torrents to the service, you need to use third-party services to find them again. How Magnet Links Are Different From.Torrent Files. When you download a.torrent file, you're essentially downloading a small file that contains information on the larger files you want to download.

How Magnet Links Are Different From .Torrent Files

When you download a .torrent file, you're essentially downloading a small file that contains information on the larger files you want to download. The torrent file tells your torrent client the names of the files being shared, a URL for the tracker, and more. Your torrent client then calculates a hash code, which is a unique code that only that torrent has—kind of like an ISBN or catalog number. From there, it can use that code to find others uploading those files, so you can download from them.

A magnet link does away with the middleman. A magnet link is essentially a hyperlink containing the hash code for that torrent, which your torrent client can immediately use to start finding people sharing those files. Magnet links don't require a tracker (since it uses DHT, which you can read more about here), nor does it require you to download a separate file before starting the download, which is convenient.

BitTorrent’s Future: DHT, PEX, and Magnet Links Explained

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How to Use Magnet Links

Magnet links are dead simple to use. If you head to the Pirate Bay now, you'll notice that magnet links are now the default, with the 'Get Torrent File' link in parentheses next to it (a link which will disappear in a month or so). Just click on the magnet link, and your browser should automatically open up your default BitTorrent client and start downloading. It's that easy.

What This Ultimately Means for You

The short answer is nothing. In fact, it could mean that downloading torrents takes one or two fewer clicks, since all you have to do is click on the link to start the download. When magnet links first came out, not all torrent clients supported them, but now you can use magnet links with just about any semi-popular torrent client out there—including our favorites uTorrent, Transmission, and Deluge, among others, so you shouldn't notice a problem with that.

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The main reason torrent sites are moving toward magnet links—apart from convenience to the user—is that these links (probably) free torrent sites like The Pirate Bay from legal trouble. Since The Pirate Bay won't be hosting files that link to copyrighted content—that is, the torrent files—it's more difficult to claim the site is directly enabling the downloading of copyrighted material. Whether this semantic leap actually protects torrent sites remains to be seen, but for now, you can sleep soundly knowing that the sites will stick around for awhile longer and that your torrents will take one less click to get started. If you want to read more about magnet links, check out the Wikipedia page on the subject.

Last week The Pirate Bay confirmed it would shut down its tracker permanently, instead encouraging the use of DHT, PEX, and magnet links. This move confounded many BitTorrent enthusiasts, who were confronted with confusing new terminology and technology. Time for some explaining.

The Pirate Bay's recent confirmation that they had closed down their tracker since DHT and Peer Exchange have matured enough to take over, was coupled with the news that they had added Magnet links to the site. This news has achieved its aim of stimulating discussion, but has also revealed that there is much confusion over how these technologies work.

The key thing to understand is that nobody is being forced to use Magnet links or trackerless torrents. While these long-standing technologies may prove to be the future, they will co-exist with tracker-enabled torrenting for quite some time. For now, nobody will be forced to immediately change their existing downloading habits, although it may be wise to switch to a BitTorrent client that is compatible with these technologies.

In an attempt to clear some of the mystique surrounding DHT, PEX and Magnet links we will walk through all three briefly, hoping to assure those who've become confused earlier this week.

DHT and PEX in action

DHT

Using DHT instead of trackers is one of the things The Pirate Bay is now trying to encourage, and torrent downloads that rely solely on this technology are often referred to as 'trackerless torrents.' DHT is used to find the IP addresses of peers, mostly in addition to a tracker. It is enabled by default in clients such as uTorrent and Vuze and millions of people are already using it without knowing.

DHT's function is to find peers who are downloading the same files, but without communicating with a central BitTorrent tracker such as that previously operated by The Pirate Bay.

DHT is by no means a new technology. A version debuted in the BitTorrent client Azureus in May 2005 and an alternative but incompatible version was added to Mainline BitTorrent a month later. There is, however, a plugin available for Azureus Vuze which allows it access to the Mainline DHT network used by uTorrent and other clients.

Peer Exchange ('PEX')

Peer Exchange is yet another means of finding IP addresses. Rather than acting like a tracker, it leverages the knowledge of peers you are connected to, by asking them in turn for the addresses of peers they are connected to. Although it requires a 'kick start', PEX will often uncover more genuine peers than DHT or a tracker.

Magnet links

Traditionally, .torrent files are downloaded from torrent sites. A torrent client then calculates a torrent hash (a kind of fingerprint) based on the files it relates to, and seeks the addresses of peers from a tracker (or the DHT network) before connecting to those peers and downloading the desired content.

How To Associate Magnet Links With Vuze

Sites can save on bandwidth by calculating torrent hashes themselves and allowing them to be downloaded instead of .torrent files. Given the torrent hash – passed as a parameter within a Magnet link – clients immediately seek the addresses of peers and connect to them to download first the torrent file, and then the desired content.

It is worth noting that BitTorrent can not ditch the .torrent format entirely and rely solely on Magnet links. The .torrent files hold crucial information that is needed to start the downloading process, and this information has to be available in the swarm.

Pirate Bay links cf. Mininova links: When the Magnet link specification first came out, in January last year it called for a particular format ('base32 encoded'). The links that EZTV, Mininova and ShareReactor have displayed for some time all conform to that original specification. In May of last year the specification was changed, in favor of 'hex encoding', and that is the format of the links being displayed by The Pirate Bay. Torrent clients should accept either format.

Compatible Clients

Best Torrent Magnet Sites

All the main torrent clients: uTorrent 1.8.5, Vuze 4.3.0.2, BitTorrent 6.3, BitComet 1.16, and Transmission 1.76 (and others) support Peer Exchange and DHT (via a plugin in the case of Vuze). Neither BitComet nor Transmission yet support Magnet links but Transmission is planning to include Magnet link support in the upcoming 1.8 release. Bearing in mind that no site, including The Pirate Bay, has yet abandoned support for traditional torrent files, there is plenty of time for support to be added.

We hope that this article has cleared some of the smoke that was generated by The Pirate Bay's announcements earlier this week. There is no need to panic, cry or be angry, and it's not a problem if you're still confused after reading this article. Torrents will still be available and aside from some extra downloading options thanks to sites that add Magnet links, nothing drastic will change in the near future.

BitTorrent's Future? DHT, PEX and Magnet Links Explained [TorrentFreak]

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