"While BitTorrent has been on Opera's radar screen for more than a year, the true value of the technology became evident when the company launched Opera 8 in April this year," said Christen Krogh, Opera Software's VP of Engineering, in announcing that the browser can now be downloaded via BitTorrent. "The massive response, with more than 100 downloads per second, dealt a technical knock-out to Opera's servers. With BitTorrent, users would have had an alternative download mechanism," said Christen Krogh, VP of Engineering, Opera Software.

With BitTorrent, Opera hopes to make it easier for users to download the large amount of legal material available, such as Linux software and computer game demos. The Opera browser will also be offered for download as a torrent file.

Opera already supports other file protocols such as FTP and HTTP, and BitTorrent is the logical next step in the company's strategy to make protocols available that increase productivity and the overall Internet experience for the end-users. The BitTorrent protocol differs from FTP and HTTP in that it makes downloading a large file more efficient, as individuals downloading the same file will assist each other in the download process.

Opera emphasizes that the TP should be used for preview purposes only, and is available for download at the Opera Community beta forum.

More information on BitTorrent can be found on Opera's BitTorrent resource page.