Sorry, fifth_horseman I'm not sure how familiar you are with BitTorrent (But for anyone else reading this who doesn't know, here's the basics): :help:
BitTorrent
is P2P, only of a slightly different type.
The problem with regular P2P is that you need to be connected to the particular network that the files are shared on. Usually using particular type of software (WinMX, ShareAza etc..) and when you download a file, you download it via that particular network, getting your file directly from other peoples PC's one bit at a time (from the first piece of the file, until you've got it all).
With BitTorrent, all you need is the client* (ANY Client... BitTorrent, Azureus, BitTornado etc. etc.) and once you've downloaded few KB starting file from Abandonia, your client will connect to all the other BitTorrent clients accross the world, that have that same file available, and download the rest from them. (For large files, this is usually a lot faster than by regular P2P).
The idea is to encourage sharing.
Example: Abandonia has 1 complete copy of a file, it gives a copy of half to me, and a copy of the other half to the_fith_horesman, then we can also connect to each other as well as Abandonia to get our missing halves. (BitTorrent does this automatically).
So instead of 2 people downloading 2 copies of the file just from Abandonia, the site only has to give 1 copy between us, and we share the rest.
(meaning it could cut the time to download, and cut the server costs)
*Client = Downloading Program
The Abandonia Server would only have to hold the same files that it does now, and hopefully once a few people are sharing them it should lighten the load.
This is the reason HOTU have torrent downloads available, it keeps costs low for big files.
While it is usually slower than HTTP / FTP downloading, you don't have the problems of expensive bandwidth. And if enough people are sharing the files between them, the speeds are fantastic anyway.
