Newbie - Basic File Sharing Question

[Pintman]

I am new to file sharing, and I have a very simple question, although my terminology may not be correct:

If I do a default install of Vuze, is "file sharing" (seeding?) turned on by default?  In other words, assuming a default install (the software makes all the choices, I make none), will files I have downloaded automatically be available to other users, and do I have to do something to prevent this?

If the default is no file sharing - my downloaded files will not be available to other users - what do I have to do to enable file sharing? I'm sorry, but the online resources just aren't real clear to me.

Was this any different on Vuze 5.1.0.0?  

Pintman

 

[GaryE]

Yes the default is to share the files you have whenever you are seeding them.

However, let us take a step back so that you understand the basics here.

Torrenting is a type of networking called peer to peer networking.  Now what that means is that instead of downloading content directly from a website you are downloading from another user (or peer).  At the simpilest level what the torrent site does is that it keeps a list of all peers for each torrent and it keeps track of how much data each peer has uploaded and downloaded during the last update interval.  This update interval is set by the torrent site and it is most commonly about 30 mintues.  So every update interval (30 minutes) you send a message to the torrent site which says "On torrent #XXXXXX I have just uploaded YYYYY MBytes and downloaded ZZZZ MBytes".  The torrent site then acknowledges that message and sends you a list of the IP address of all of the other peers (people) who are also seeding or leeching that torrent.  Your torrent client saves that information and does a lot of stuff that you do not need to worry about for now and trys to send and or receive data to/from peers which have the part(s) of the torrent you require or that you have.

That is torrenting and peer to peer networking in a nutshell.  There is a lot of stuff I am glossing over and or just omitting but that is the jist of it.

So you see unless you do something intensionally kind of screwy (like manually limiting your upload speed on seeding/completed torrents) whenever you are seeding . . . you are in fact sharing the data with the other peers whenever you are seeding.  In fact you are also sharing data with the other peers when you are leeching too.

This has always been the default for torrenting and it has not changed in any torrent client which I have been aware of in at least the last 8 years or so (when I first started torrenting).

I hope that clears things up for you.  If that is not clear to you ask some more specific questions and I or someone else will try to explain things a little differently.

Having said that I am reading between the lines of your post a little bit and I suspect that your next question is going to be . . . "Why am I not uploading then?".  If I am correct let us know and I or someone else can explain the common reasons why new torrenters are not able to upload much (if at all).  There are a lot of common pitfalls that prevent new torrenters from uploading at optimal levels and most of us have experienced them at one time or another so do not feel stupid or anything!  Just ask the question!

[Attos]

In looking for an answer to a similar question I ran across this post, so I think adding to it would be the appropriate thing to do. My question, is also about sharing, but I guess it goes a bit deeper into the subject.

How can I share a file to the whole world?

I have a number of files I would like to share to the general public. These are of my own authoring, so no copyrights infringement issues here. I went through File>New Torrent menu on Vuze and I guess I managed to share a file. But I am not sure if I did it correctly. It now appears in my Library, but, am I sharing it?

On the "Make a torrent" pop-up window I chose the "Use and external Tracker" option. Then I opened the text file and added some additonal trackers that I found on some other files I downloaded before.

Is that it? Do I basically have to just wait until somebody happens to run across my file, possibly by googling it, or do I have to do anything in addition?

Thanks for your support.