Transferring Files over your LAN via BitTorrent

Sometimes you may need to transfer files over a network to several computers. While you could put it on a flash drive or CD/DVD, you would have to go to each computer an copy the files and it may take a while to copy all the files (especially with flash drives, most have bad read/write speeds) . An FTP server would also be possible, but it would not work well when several computers were downloading from it at the same time.
When you are using a lot of computers with large files, BitTorrent works best. Of course, you may not want to use a public tracker. Luckily, uTorrent has the option to act as a tracker. This Instructable only covers operating this on a LAN, but you can use port forwarding if you wish to share the files with people on the Internet. This is not covered in this instructable though.

When to Use this Method

BitTorrent is made for transferring large files to a large number of computers. If you only need to transfer files to a small number of computers or the files are very small, it is much easier and quicker to use a flash drive or other removable media.

Note: I will not be explaining the basics of BitTorrent in this instructable. Some previous experience is recommended. Also, this is meant for LEGAL use such as home videos or sending large amounts of your pictures to other home computers. I am not responsible if this is used in an illegal way or if you somehow mess up your computer or network.

Network Switch Picture by Wikimedia Commons user Zuzu

Step 1 List of Materials

First, you need to have a LAN (Local Area Network). It can be wired, wireless, or a combination of both. An Internet connection is only needed to download the BitTorrent client.
Each computer needs to have the following:

• Connection to your LAN
• a BitTorrent client

You can use nearly any BitTorrent client, but a for this Instructable I will be using uTorrent. The computers that do not have the files can use any client but the computer that will be used as a tracker should be uTorrent since I am not sure if other clients can also act as a tracker. Also, because of this, you can not use a Linux based OS for the tracker since uTorrent is not available for Linux. The client computers can still have Linux, you just need to use a different BitTorrent client.

Comments

[wkcs007]

hi sir, I've been wondering since a very long time if this is possible, (to share large files in LAN using bitTorrent. Thank you for so much. I'll will try it out.

But I have questions.
I am planning to use this to sync game folder, so that once the prime game source has patches/updates installed, the game folder would be seeded to all computers in a LAN, and eventually all computer will have the updated version. Now, if afterwards, the source is updated the second time, do the other computers in the LAN automatically redownload/update their file/folders to match the seed source? I was thinking of an automatic realtime folder copying to LAN but with the load distribution characteristics of the bitTorrent protocol.

second question,
If the case above is possible, could the prime source be set to be read only (not changed when the other computer is the LAN made changes to their folder)? This is to avoid the prime source being modified by malware or cheats... Thank you so much.