“Torrents”: It is the new synonym for file transfer in the digital world. People across the globe use it for all type of data sharing requirements from movies to software and much more. It gravitates customers with its cost-free approach and highly user-centric design.
Still, the professionals in the domain are a bit apprehensive about its abilities to ensure a secure and efficient environment for data transfer. There is a visible tilt towards Usenet as a competent and viable alternative and is gaining traction at an impressive rate.
What is Usenet, and how is it different from torrents?
Usenet is an interconnected global network of servers that mirrors at regular intervals. Thousands of Newsgroups on different topics and its subscribers are the building blocks for Usenet. Newsgroups carry out discussions on the specific topic and enable data sharing between the group members. To utilize the features of Usenet, one need to be a member of the newsgroup and is often a paid membership. Usenet providers recover their expenses for server management through these subscription fees.
On the other hand, Torrents work on a peer-to-peer model, by making each one in the network a contributor using their resources. It eliminates the need for expensive servers and enables them to offer the service as free.
What are the drawbacks of torrents?
During Torrent downloading, a part of the downloaded file is seeded back to the network for others to download. This inefficient bandwidth usage reduces the download speed significantly, and the unregulated upload may get you a penalty for exceeding bandwidth limit.
Torrent uses a tracker to fetch files from different seeders across the network. If the number of seeders is high, then the download tends to be faster. However, the requirement to establish and maintain multiple sessions eats up resources and leads to performance degradation.
The tracker logs your session activities such as Public IP, access details in an unencrypted form, making you vulnerable to hacker attacks. VPN is the only available solution to mitigate such security threats and is an expensive deal.
Usenet: Is it a better alternative for torrents?
Usenet employs dedicated connections to the server and utilizes the entire bandwidth for download alone, making the process highly efficient. It uses SSL certificates to establish a secure connection. The server store files as compressed chunks of data and eliminate the need for external connections. Data centers, that host Usenet servers are well equipped to ensure continuous data availability and security. Such a system of assured performance is not available for torrents as it relies on the seeder resources.
Copyright Violations
Uploading and sharing of the copyrighted material is a menace for Torrents and Usenet alike. Even though both limits the responsibility for such violations to the user, it keeps occurring unabatedly.
However, torrents are unable to get rid of it as there is no central authority to remove it. If you download copyrighted material, you are more likely to face the music as you automatically become a seeder, who distributes it to someone.
Frequent incidents of such violations invited the wrath of enforcement agencies and torrents are getting banned in multiple countries. Usenet manages DMCA violations efficiently by removing the contents from the servers upon notification and make it unavailable to the entire network.
Usenet providers, both free and commercial, gives you ample opportunities to get a first-hand experience of the service through highly flexible and scalable plans. It enables you to make informed decisions to choose the right path for your requirements.