Seeders and leechers are terms used in P2P or FTP download websites to describe users who are either uploading or downloading files. Heres a breakdown of what each term means:
Seeders
- Users who have the complete file and are sharing it.
- They have already downloaded the entire file and are now sharing it with other users.
- They are uploading the data.
Leechers
- Users who are downloading the files.
- They have either some or none of the files in a torrent.
- They are not explicitly making content available in return.
When downloading a file, a user starts out as a leecher, as there will be a period in which they don’t have enough of the file to be a seeder. Once a user has downloaded the whole file, they can become a seeder and share the file with other users. The more seeders present per file, the quicker the file will download. Conversely, if there are only leechers, there is nothing to download.
