the forums at degreez.net

Is there a way to download just some files instead of the complete pack of the torrent?

From the lack of responses, I assume that is a no.

Is that a limitation of the protocol or of the client?

Thanks.

Simple answer: No, because a torrent is a collection of files that are treated as a single file. It's like a cd image or archive, you need the whole image/archiv to extract a single file.

Advanced answer: Yes it's possible. Bittorrent splits data in small parts, so if you have all the small parts which belong to a specific file it is possible to use that file before the torrent is completed. But in a torrent there are no file boundaries, just blocks of equivalent length, so you will most likely need more data than the size of that specific file. Also the data doesn't need to be at the correct position as it arrives. You also don't have the control over the data you will get, because it's not intended. So to sum this up you will need to write your own client if you want specific files out of a torrent (with control over the files you want to get)...but please don't do it .

Azureus supports this feature. BitTornado, as far as I know, doesn't yet support this.

This functionality is planned, but isn't yet available.

SO Let me get this Straight..??

If at the end of the file being downloaded to 100%, do all these small parts unscramble themselves back into the original file format??

ie, file received in parts : 3,5,1,6,2,7,9,8,4 = 100% = 1,2,3,4,5,6,etc..

And all this is processed by the Bit Torrent Software right at the end when the 'Done' is displayed??

Sounds like a crude form of Network Encryption, but P2P though..

No, bittorrent shuffles the parts "on-the-fly".
That means, with the above example, when part 1 is received it gets exchanged with part 3 (3,5 -> 1,5,3) and when part 2 is received it gets exchanged with part 5 (1,5,3,6 -> 1,2,3,6,5).
It's just the way bittorrent normally allocates and writes data to disk. If you change the allocation method to pre-allocate or hit finish allocation on your download, the parts will be saved at the right position instantly.