is there a difference between p2p and bit torrents?

[tali122]

is there a difference between p2p and bit torrents-if so what are the dis/advantages of both?

[fo3nix]

p2p means peer to peer. i.e. you, a regular computer user, connecting to another regular computer user just like yourself. there is no server involved (technically there is to sort all the connections, but not for the downloading itself: it's often direct).

bitTorrent is different, as everything is still managed by a central server. The BitTorrent protocol just relieves the server from a lot of the work.

http://www.bittorrent.com/introduction.html

[Mattk]

bit torrent is where you will find the bigger files ie movies and albums rather than just single songs 

[stevie21]

Often on p2p networks you might find 100 people with the same file and you can choose to download it from any one of them.
In my mind, the major difference between standard p2p programs (or protocols) and bittorrent is that bittorrent will connect to all 100 of them and download fragments of the file from them all simultaneously.