Magnet link, DHT e PeerExchange

Durante la cena di fine anno si parlava dei magnet link, che non avevamo chiaro cosa fossero.
Googlando ho trovato questo articolo che lo spiega in maniera piuttosto chiara.
Riporto le parti salienti.

DHT’s function is to find peers who are downloading the same files, but without communicating with a central BitTorrent tracker such as that previously operated by The Pirate Bay.

Peer Exchange is yet another means of finding IP addresses.
it leverages the knowledge of peers you are connected to, by asking them in turn for the addresses of peers they are connected to.

Given the torrent hash – passed as a parameter within a Magnet link – clients immediately seek the addresses of peers and connect to them to download first the torrent file, and then the desired content.