For decades on many occasions we have been faced with the situation that we need to download one or several large files from the Internet. One of the most effective solutions is to use P2P networks and their Torrent files. We load these in the corresponding program that acts as a client so that the download begins as such.
Here we have a multitude of options to choose from, most of them free to interface with these tasks. We are talking about Torrent clients that we can download and install on the computer to work with the aforementioned P2P networks. From here we can access all kinds of content, both for upload and download. For example, if we want to download certain files, whether personal or corporate, we can find them in two ways.
This is precisely what we want to talk about in these lines. Specifically, we are going to show you the main differences between a file in Torrent format and a Magnet link. Generally, these are the two formats that we are going to find on the internet when adding content to our P2P client. In fact, on many occasions we are going to find both formats so that we can choose between them, and we don’t even know their difference.
Most of us already know what a Torrent file is, something we have been working with for years. In reality, they are files that have the same extension, that is, .torrent, which we can load directly into the client in question. To give us an idea, these are files that internally contain a route sheet that tells them how to download the specified content from the Internet.
Torrent file or Magnet Link, which is more interesting
This is something that the aforementioned Torrent clients know how to interpret internally to make these contents available to us once they have been downloaded. What we need to know here is that all of this that we are downloading is done from the computers of other users connected to the network and that they are sharing the same thing. This means that in most cases these files will always be available and it is very difficult to completely remove them from the Internet.
In fact, the moment we start the download itself, we automatically become another seed for other people to download through our PC. However, we must keep in mind that when talking about a magnet link, the method of operation changes slightly. By getting a magnet link, it does not require the aforementioned route to start downloading content. This means that the process will start sooner than with a Torrent.
Here we will only have to load that link in the corresponding client so that the download process automatically begins. Keep in mind that this same link contains the file location to speed up what we are really looking for in this case. In fact, the magnet itself already contains all the necessary information to start the download directly.
Precisely for this reason, in recent times, users prefer this type of file to Torrent to upload to their clients. These contain key information such as the link and network identifier, the full hash of the file, and its name if necessary. As we told you, this greatly speeds up the download of files via P2P, hence its growth.