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Some people are afraid to use Bittorrent because they fear their computer might get infected with Bittorrent viruses. This fear is largely misplaced. Bittorrent (BT) itself is not infected with a computer virus. Confidence on this issue can perhaps best be gained by better understanding what BT is and what it is not.

Downloading a file over the Net is usually done by a computer accessing the file from a single server. For example, when a person buys an e-book online, the person downloads the file directly from a server belonging to the online retailer. The communication is direct and one-to-one, computer to server and vice versa.

By contrast, BitT is designed as a piece of peer-to-peer file sharing software. A download is sub-divided into many separate pieces. Each piece might be downloaded from a different individual computer. The actual download will be done in a way so that the task is completed most rapidly.

For P-to-P file sharing, the download gets started by a computer request. The download is contributed by many computers comparable to the one that made the original download request. Hence the name P-to-P.

Peer-to-peer software overcomes two shortcomings associated with the conventional computing model. If the single or central server is not available, the download cannot proceed. Similarly, if there are many requests (big demand) for the file, the download will be very slow, or the server may crash even if the server has a high bandwidth connection to the Internet.

P-to-P file sharing casts a wide net; it spreads the download request out to many separate routes across the Net. This wide distribution may spread across the whole planet. For instance, an individual in New York might be searching for a book no longer covered by copyright.

That London computer might use BT to search for the book and find that, say, 53 computers spread across six continents have a copy. BT will begin downloading the book from all or some of those 53 computers. Each computer might contribute a small part of the total file. Each part is delivered to the London computer where BT will patch all the parts together into a coherent file.

To sum up, Bittorrent viruses are not the real risk. The real risk is the files downloaded with Bitt; they may be virus infected. This risk can be controlled by using security software to scrub download files, preferably before they are downloaded.

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