BitTorrent is the name of a client application for the torrent peer-to-peer (P2P) file distribution protocol created by programmer Bram Cohen. BitTorrent is designed to widely distribute large amounts of data without incurring the corresponding consumption in server and bandwidth resources (and typically, monetary fees attracted as a result of that).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bittorrent

I use bitlord to d/l shit from bittorrent sites.....its the best i have used.

But yea bittorrent is generally faster than using other p2p programes like slsk/limewire/bearshare etc etc