There is 4 of us on our house network which consists of 10 machines. I setup a server which ran Torrent Flux so we had a centralised machine for downloading which was great for months. However, with the release of Exeem we installed the app on our own machines.
So my question is would it make a difference on our network performance now that we are downloading on 4 machines instead of putting all the downloads on the centralised server? (for arguments sake say I am downloading the same amount of information)

Feel like this is probably a stupid question as I dont think it would make a difference but after talking to others they have suggested otherwise. So now im a little unsure.

You're question is difficult to answer without more specifics. I will make a bunck of assumptions and take a stab tho.

Chances are that you are running on a broadband connection ( generally 1~4 Mb ) it is not likely for you to overload your network ( generally 100 Mb ).

That said, I think the question you want to ask is 'will running multiple applications that suck down a lot of bandwith overload your broadband'. The answer is almost always, yes - it will bring it to it's knees.

This is why QOS (Quality of Service) was made. If you have a router that supports QOS, you can set it to prioritise traffic or carve out sections of bandwidth - usually based on the ports the applications use or on IP addresses.

Your assumptions are spot on (got a 4Mbps connection). Have to admit that I haven't read alot about QoS, so im going to do a bit of research around that. Cheers for your post, much appreciated.