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No, it's called Shareaza :)

I've posted up a Gnutella 2 link on Sharelive. Download using Shareaza.

Someone please put up a P2P link of the game. I'd do it myself except the site is slashdotted.
Shareaza is good if you use windows.

I just posted a Shareaza-compatible link for it at Sharelive.

Here are some links to download the windows copy of the game.
Or search for DMJava1.05.exe on Gnutella 1 or 2
magnet
gnutella
For best results, use Shareaza.

Crap. The papers have always been available at the GDF yahoogroup and at LimeWire.com. You didn't even have to join the group to download them so it did not take a Raphael Manfredi or a Tor Klingberg to document the gnutella protocol.

Crap? No. The papers were a complicated mix of old documents and new additions (most not documented nor indexed).

Even worse, you had to search a path through old v0.4 specs, old GDF postings and finally reading open source code (to reverse engineer what the core communication does). Then you had to test your own Gnutella code against other clienst and ask on the GDF why it doesn't work with client x or client y. Usually you did crash into Vinnies non-conform client. There were no papers, no RFC, or support for new developers. The GDF in the beginning did even hide from new devlopers, it's still a kind of Bearshare-Limewire elite group that try to keep control. Regarding old Xolox, they didn't invite or inform them about well hidden GDF, instead stated unbased accusations about a technology that now is in every client. Doh! Don't forget Bearshare is prorietary and contrary to Shareaza the programmer needs his "ADWARE" money. *cough*
So let me resume.... no efficient sourounding, no open minded environment and no brief documents. Oh and in the beginning there was a civil war between the only two commercial vendors Bearshare and Limewire. Now best friends shaking each others hands, because they found a common interest and better targets. I remember a good quote from Vinnie at that time: "growing a stable network and encouraging new developers are mutually exclusive". It's in the GDF archives.

Raphael's and Tor's Gnutella RFC was actually the first step towards a usefull Gnutella documentation. I once was interested in Gnutella development, but the greed, lies and inefficient inovations did tell me... this is no place to be. I have respect for those who did stay and played a role in this soap opera (I guess even a job in Redmond is giving you more codingg fun - wow what sarcasm hehe).

What those interviews are really about: bitching against a new big player on the Gnutella playground. It wasn't said often enough: Vinnie is splitting Gnutella, he is doing it now and nobody else. Justin (from Winamp) should invent G3 in his free time, but I fear he dont want to waste his time with endless GDF arguing. AFAIK G2 was never planed nor designed nor announced as a proprietary network, so your false rumours are wrong. Prolly the best that Mike can do is posting the G2 specs as planed (....before Duke Nukem Forever comes out *grin).

Have fun, Mark

PS: See Mike's comments (warning long post) http://www.shareaza.com/forum/viewthread.aspx?ID=5 138
PPS: You should tell your Ultapeer explanation to Limewire, I'm sure they appreciate a reasonable explanation. :)

have a look on first post in this thread, it's from Mike (the Gnutella2 developer) and he is commenting the interviews:
http://www.shareaza.com/forum/viewthread.aspx?ID=5 138

A quote from the ending:

"The Gnutella developer community, or at least the subset of it that Vinnie [Bearshare developer] is referring to here, is happy to trust you if you're not a threat to its comfortable pace. There are much more important goals than having that trust.
I hope this clears up any misconceptions that may have resulted from reading the original interview. Unfortunately this isn't the first time (and probably won't be the last time) someone attacks Shareaza's credibility with unfounded accusations."

P2P?

I've written a tutorial on how you can use P2P on your website to save bandwidth, space etc. An obvious way to do this would be to run a P2P client and share the file on a simple PC & Cable Modem. This works, but it is a bit generic and un-professional. A better way to do this may be to run a P2P client such as Shareaza on a webserver. You could then control the client using some type of remote service (Terminal Services, for example).

P2P has it's advantages. Such as:
- Users who download the file also share it. This is especially useful if the client/network supports Partial File Sharing.
- When you release the file using the P2P client, you only need to upload to only a few users. Those users can then share the file using Partial File Sharing etc.
- Unlike FTP and HTTP, they aren't connecting to your webserver. Thus, it saves bandwidth for you and allows people to browse your website for actual content, not media. (Though, media is content). In addition, there is ussually "Max # of Connections" allowed to a server or FTP. Not so on P2P.
- P2P Clients have good queuing tools. At least, Shareaza does. It has a "Small Queue" and a "Large Queue". This basically allows you to have, say, 4 Upload slots for Large Files (Files that are above 10MB, for example) and one for Small Files (Under 10MB). Users who are waiting to download from you can wait in "Queue", instead of "Max users connected" on FTP.

Though, at it's core, all of the P2P I know of uses HTTP to send files etc. But the network layer helps file distribution tremendously.

You aren't going to get thrown in the slammer for P2P File Sharing. Your going to get thrown in the slammer for illegal P2P File Sharing of copyrighted material. Granted that 99.99% of P2P File Sharing done now is illegal, it is wrong to label all P2P File Sharing as illegal.

Just because you don't know of any legal P2P File Sharing doesn't exist. Here is Open Office v1.2, Matrix Reloaded Superbowl Trailer, and this website has a lot of legitimate P2P content including Linux Distro's. Do note that all of the content above is on the Gnutella2 Network using Shareaza.

Have you tried Shareaza (w/Gnutella2)? Gnutella2 is currently the most powerful/sophisticated and advanced P2P network yet. The Shareaza client is Free/No Spyware/No Ads. You can also set it up to work on a LAN environment, so you can make your own private Gnutella2 network which would work pretty well (since it has Global search).

Shareaza isn't open source but Gnutella2 is. Or it will be, as the specs have yet to come out (though are expected soon).

Good friends, newsgroups, and IRC are 10x better than KaZaA... and I don't even have to look at Ads.

Gnucleus is good, but sharezaz is better!

Not so on Shareaza which uses Tiger Tree Hashing that verify's files as they download. Each Download Segment (around 256KB) is verified. If one segment is invalid/corrupt, it bans that source and downloads the same segement off another source (this happens rarely though).

I don't understand why they added Xolox. Nobody uses Xolox anymore. It's infested with spyware and it's GUI sucks. It is also very behind in Gnutella technologies (I think it only recently added Ultrapeers, yikes). I don't think MP3Newswire is too informed in P2P because they should of at least listed Shareaza which has been hailed as the leader of the "new Gnutella" (Shareaza's Gnutella2, noteably). Frankly, Shareaza is currently the most advanced and best looking P2P client out there.

Oh well, maybe next year.

Interesting prediction.

If Microsoft were smart, they'd just buy out (like they do everything) some existing P2P company and clean it up a bit. And if they did, I'm sure it would be Shareaza which has created the Gnutella2 Protocol which beats Gnutella1 (as it is now, and probably forever) hands down. Shareaza is currently the best P2P client has the best network in the P2P sector. Only problem is they have a lack of users (and thus files). Though, it easily rivals any Gnutella1 and probably WinMX.

Shareaza. It's easy to use, and has no spyware of any kind. It's not open source, but that's mainly to discourage spammers and such from taking the program and corrupting the source code, adding spyware and such. And there's Gnucleus for such things.

There is a bit of controversy surrounding Shareaza, though. Since the first version has came out, Shareaza has been a order of magnitude faster in coming out with new versions, new features, etc. Unfortunately, it could only go on so long before hitting the limitations of the Gnutella protocol. So, Mike (the developer), came up with a new and improved version and released a beta version of Shareaza testing the protocol, making sure it would work before he released a serious spec sheet. Many of the ruling elite (The Gnutella Developers Forum) were offended by this. Their main complaints were due to the new version being called Gnutella 2 (somewhat of a PR mistake) and a formally open standard being released beforehand or simultaneously. This has somewhat divided the Gnutella world.

However, development cranks on, and a new version was released at the beginning of the year. Specs should be released when the protocol implementation in Shareaza is finalized. Until then, you can download the 1.7 beta version at the website linked above.

I still think a P2P dBarter system could take off like a rocket if someone with one of the P2P services would install it.

Why don't they use File Sharing Clients as tools? I still buy CD's while using Shareaza. I wouldn't mind advertisments within Shareaza, or an easy way to right click songs I like and buy the entire CD.

Remember that File Sharing doesn't become a problem unless people are subsituting it from buying CD's, which is not the case with everyone. And majority who do take part in that act, probably would never buy a CD anyways. So the equilivant is listening to the music on the radio.

The solution for the RIAA is to lower CD prices a little, pay the artists more, cut the fat by getting rid of the unnessassary middlemen, and adding extra's to CD's (Stickers, Pictures, Signed stuff, Coupons, Concert Ticket Discounts, Website Member Access... etc.).

I personally know P2P Client developers and destroying buisnesses, music artists, and causing people to lose their jobs is not of their intentions.

Check out http://www.bitzi.com.
New programs like Shareaza are using 'bitprints' of songs to help you find good quality songs verses corrupted ones.

Can't Linux post up the SHA1 Hashes or at least MD5 of the files? Then I can use Shareaza to download them off the network. Everyone should use Gnutella2 with Shareaza to distribute files. You can use Shareaza with WINE, so there should be no problem.

Downloading off nodes on a P2P Network using Partial File Sharing, Download Mesh and swarming is a lot faster and efficent than downloading off a server.

Can someone tell Linus that?

Someone please G2 Shareaza the video before it gets totally slashdotted.

Well, here's the story.

Micheal Stokes (Shareaza developer>) thought that the GDF (Gnutella Developers Forum) was a too slow at fixing Gnutella's problems (unscalable, too much unused bandwidth, unorgnaized for future additions) so he went ahead himself (by himself) and wrote Gnutella2. He has done this before, when he wrote the spec for "Remote Queueing" (kind of like IRC). He wrote his spec first, developed it in his client, released it then proposed the idea to the GDF. The GDF likes it and now Limewire, Bearshare and Gnucleus all support it.

The GDF is pissed that Mike went ahead and "updated Gnutella" without asking them first. Granted, they have a right to. The GDF is meant to be a consensus, a forum for all developers. And a "assumed" condition of that is to let the other developers know *ahead of time* before going ahead and doing something this massive. And the entire idea that he called it "Gnutella2" (using the Gnutella brand) and advertised it as the "next revolution in P2P" (which it actually, IMO, is) pisses them off even more.

However, if you notice, it seems only the developers with corperate ties are pissed. Other clients such as GTK (Linux), Gnucleus, etc. all seem interested in the protocol, I believe GTK already said they'd implament it. Limewire and BearShare still seem upset. (It's like owning a oil company, then someone comes out with electricty - sucks).

Anyways, Mike likes the Gnutella ideals - that it is open and free. So he called it "Gnutella2". Partly to "refresh" Gnutella and revive Gnutella's bad image it has with the general user (which it has achieved IMO) and to show users it's the "second generation" of Gnutella.

The Protocol is being released now. This is part one, the next one will go over the new packet encapsulation and what not.

Download link http://download.shareaza.com:8825/Shareaza1701.exe seems impossibly slow -- I'm getting 276 bytes per sec on my DSL connection. For anyone who wants to check out the 1.7 prerelease, here's a mirror:

http://nstrom.chaosnet.org/Shareaza1701.exe

Whaa? I actually think Shareaza has the best UI out of all Gnutella clients.

Though, there is that one Searching Status I begged Mike not to put in, which was put in anyways =)

Your suggestions are welcome on the forum.

Wow! I started this :-)

Check my threads on Shareza and Gnucleus. Both clients connect to Gnutella and feature Partial File Sharing, so we all can get the files faster.

I am powersharing the five cds, and I've seen around 10 more sources for each on the network.

For those Gnutella users, here is a MAGNET URI for the Quicktime file (with it's SHA1 hash, 2 Sources):

magnet:?xt=urn:sha1:HEIRRDQ25N4KBFO3TKV45CXIJWHY DD AT&dn=Lord%20of%20the%20Rings%20(Two%20Towers)%20T railer%20%232%20(9.30.02).mov&xs=http%3A//12.233.1 20.175%3A6346/uri-res/N2R%3Furn%3Asha1%3AHEIRRDQ25 N4KBFO3TKV45CXIJWHYDDAT&xs=http://progressive.stre am.aol.com/aol/us/aolentertainment/movies/2002/lot r/132757_638498_dl.mov

For Gntuella, I recommend using Shareaza, as you can download off HTTP sources as well.

If you want to download it off eDonkey, Kazaa (FastTrack) etc. click here to view it's Bitzi Ticket for more links/rating options/metadata.

FYI... if you use Ad-Aware to remove the spyware components of Kazaa, it kills the program.

IIRC, Kazaa needs Cydoor to run. Fortunately, there's a dummy Cydoor DLL available. (Can't say that I've used Kazaa or Kazaa Lite in a while, though...I started running Shareaza recently, which is spyware-free, ad-free, and works with a true decentralized network.)

Limewire is behind, in my opinion. It still has not added Remote Queuing (like IRC has, wait in queue slots instead of hammering nodes). And BTW, nearly all contemporary Gnutella clients (Gnucleus, Shareaza, Bearshare, Xolox etc.) have HUGE added.

Shareaza and Bearshare have already added it, and it's working great.

Limewire I would not recommend, Shareaza is probably your best bet on the latest Gnutella Technologies.

I was going to download it and make a MAGNET link, but I can't even get the file :P If you have it, run it through Bitzi and share the Hash with us!

If you want to share it the right way, share it on Shareaza, then right click the file in your library and go to "Copy URL". Then paste the URL up here =)

The download link for Shareaza is dead (seems the host the download on their website points to fell out of DNS).

Most other sites only list shareaza.com as download site or don't offer the latest version (1600).

So here is a working mirror for Shareaza I found:

Download Shareaza 1600 from Freenet.de

If your really cool, you'll download Mozilla through Gnutella using Shareaza.

I've included four sources in this MAGNET URI link, so when you click it you can download a chunk of the file off each of them! I even added myself as a source. And if everyone shares, we can all download the file of peers instead of the servers!

magnet:?xt=urn:sha1:M3UDEZTSE2UK7C6BC2EYF5VFN6N3 DB SJ&dn=mozilla-win32-1.1-installer.exe&xs=http%3A// 12.240.86.81%3A6346/uri-res/N2R%3Furn%3Asha1%3AM3U DEZTSE2UK7C6BC2EYF5VFN6N3DBSJ&xs=http://ftp.mozill a.org/pub/mozilla/releases/mozilla1.1/mozilla-win3 2-1.1-installer.exe&xs=http://archive.progeny.com/ mozilla/releases/mozilla1.1/mozilla-win32-1.1-inst aller.exe&xs=http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/packages/i nfosystems/WWW/clients/mozilla/releases/mozilla1.1 /mozilla-win32-1.1-installer.exe

Copy and Paste it in Shareaza under "Tools -> Download URL".

Oh the Power of Gnutella!

I agree to some of that, Gnutella isn't ready in alot of ways, but it's improving constantly. When Morpheus switched, it hurt the network because it didn't have any Ultrapeer-election system (The buggy Gnucleus Clone, that Morpheus used as it's client), and allowed any node to become an Ultrapeer, even if they are a 56k user, on Windows 98.

If KazaA users switched to Shareaza, I think Gnutella would hold up quite fine. On the other hand, however, if they all poured into Morpheus, the network would get hurt.

KazaA works better than Gnutella because in alot of ways, it's Centralized. If you nuked the Kazaa HQ, it would die. If you nuked any part of Gnutella, it would still function as if nothing had happened. That's the difference. And that's why the FastTrack, or any centralized P2P Protocol, will not survive. Or at least, not with the RIAA on the same planet.

...making Gnutella into IRC...

Stop the FUD.

People need to realize that Gnutella is now fastly becoming a big player in the function and value of the Internet.

Gnutella, in my view (and many others), is not a mecca for porn, warez, and MP3's - but a pool where anyone can share any type of file.

A bigger trend now showing up is linking to files on the Gnutella network instead of the common http://site.com/file.zip. How does this benfit you? You get faster downloads by utilizing partial file sharing, swarm downloads, etc. It also benfits servers greatly. They now aren't the only source for the download, because once the file gets onto a Gnutella client, it searches for more peers, and shares the load with them. This can save TREMENDOUS bandwidth.

For example, Linux can link to Linux links as such: magnet:?xt=urn:sha1:(InsertSHA1)&dn=Linux&xs=http: //www.linux.org/linux.iso

(not an actual correct MAGNET link, but you get the idea)

When someone clicks that, it opens it up in a Gnutella client. It begins downloading from that source, and searching for the same file on the Gnutella network. Through the entire life of the download, it will continue to add sources. You could then be downloading from over 30 people at once, gaining speeds of up to 10MBPS+.

Oh, the power of Gnutella. Can KazAa (FastTrack) do that?! (Well, it can, kind of :P)

Oh, how do you know if that's the correct file? Hashing. Gnutella servents are implamenting hashing now, where each file has it's own hash. So when searching for files, they can swarm you downloads. You are GUARANTEED that all the sources your downloading from are in fact the same file, because they have the same hash (SHa1). That's whats getting the RIAA so scared :P No longer can they infect files and make them the same file size/file name.

Also new on the scene (well, new as in new popularity) is Bitzi. Bitzi catologs hashs (bitprints). You can search through their database, and find files with hashes. Click the hashes, and you can download a file. Each file on bitzi has a "Bitzi Ticket" where you can rate the file. You can mark it "Invalid/Misleading" which means it is not the file you want. You can mark them if they contain virus's too. I can almost hear the sweat dripping from the RIAA Lawyers foreheads.

Want to see the future of Gnutella? Check out Shareaza (WINE Compatable).

Supports all of what I discussed in this post.

GNUTELLA URL:
gnutella://sha1:WS6E5RWNP2AYFTTE5ZJI2QB675PS4QA5/m ozilla-win32-1.1b-installer.exe/
OR MAGNET:
magnet:?xt=urn:sha1:WS6E5RWNP2AYFTTE5ZJI2QB675PS4Q A5&dn=mozilla-win32-1.1b-installer.exe

VIEW BITZI TICKET:
http://bitzi.com/lookup/WS6E5RWNP2AYFTTE5ZJI2QB675 PS4QA5.SPSSPXIBDT3665WC4CVDWULYHD6JPSGBOOEYAZI

... uh, oh.. somebody doesn't have a MAGNET or GNUTELLA supported Gnutella client? Look's like somebody needs Shareaza ;)

So as I said, I do see this as one of the problems to be solved, although I feel it's of lesser importance. There are many ways of doing this. One of them is previewing - when downloading an audio or video file, when you're about 100k into it (100-200k if it's video), do a preview and see what you're getting. With this looping stuff you have to go farther than 100k however - preview one fourth to one third of the way into the audio files. Many Gnutella clients have a preview feature, as does Fasttrack (Kazaa).

Another method is to ban IP's and IP ranges spreading this. This is already being done - it's only a minor fix because they will always get around it, but it will help somewhat, they won't be able to have big servers spewing this stuff 24/7

The real way to fix this however is hashes. Which are already ubiquitous - they already exist and are known on Gnutella (Shareaza, Gnucleus, Morpheus, Bearshare, Limewire), Fasttrack (Kazaa) and Edonkey2000. On Gnutella (Shareaza) and Edonkey2000, you can click through or cut and paste these URI's (URLs) to files from web sites (or Usenet, IRC, e-mail, instant messengers, whatever) and start searching and downloading the files - for FastTrack (Kazaa), it is a little bit more time-consuming and complex, but worth it if you're going to be downloading a large file. The hash technology is already there, the key now is finding a trusted source for hashes which are both good and whose data is findable and downloadable on p2p networks, and for those sources to survive. I guess I'll detail how this is currently working with the various p2p networks, why not?

There are four major p2p networks - Gnutella, Fasttrack, Edonkey and Freenet. Freenet is a publishing network, the others are all file sharing networks, which is what we're concerned with. Gnutella and Fasttrack are the two largest networks. Edonkey2000 specializes somewhat in large files however, so if it's 100MB+ files you're after, Edonkey2000 is on par, and perhaps better in some ways currently, than Gnutella and FastTrack. Edonkey2000 and FastTrack are closed networks - closed source server/clients and closed protocol networks. Gnutella is open, the protocol is open, and robust open source server/clients like Gnutizen exist for it. This gives Gnutella advantages, such as a choice of multiple clients for virtually every platform, as well as other advantages. Of all the file sharing p2p networks, Gnutella is my favorite and I believe Gnutella is the future of p2p. I think competition amongst p2p networks is healthy however as every can steal everyone elses best features and innovations.

Gnutella files are hashed for HUGE with an implementation called sha1. You can read about the technical aspects here if you wish to. These hashes are useful for finding additional sources for found files so that one can resume downloads or download from multiple sources with integrity. Actually there's one caveat to that - if you are downloading from an honest client, it will tell you a truthful hash of it's data. A client could give a fake hash and then send other data - but you would have to directly download from the rogue. How clients deal with this is even more complex - Gnucleus downloads overlapping chunks - it downloads 1-2000 from one source and 1950-3950 from another - if 1950-2000 do not match from both sources, it marks both chunks as possibly bad. You can read more details about this in Gnutella documentation and discussion groups.

Aside from this usage, these hashes can be used externally as well. Currently, Shareaza, which is a pretty good servent (server/client), is the only one from which URI's (URL's) can be cut, paste, and clicked through to from the web/IRC/e-mail etc. I'm sure clients like Gnucleus will have this ability in the future. If you had Shareaza installed, you could click on a link like this - which is an, I believe uncopyrighted, Chomsky speech, Shareaza would launch (if you don't have it already) and would ask you if you want to download the file or cancel. If you select download it would connect to GnutellaNet, search for the file, and if it found a host which has the file and which has upload slots open, would start downloading it. Actually, the Slashdot "allowed HTML" filters are pulling some necessary characters out of the above link, so you can't click through on /., although you can on a normal HTML web page. I can't post an URL that you can cut and paste either since /. forces a line break after 40 characters or so, if /. didn't do this and the below was in one line, you could have cut and paste it into Shareaza, I'll show it here for an example, imagine this was all on one line for you to cut and paste, or better was just a link to cut. You can do this on any HTML page, it's just the Slashdot HTML parsing messing it up -

gnutella://sha1:HXHSJ6ATN3LQCCIOBGUEWV5FFCKP2KBL/N oam%20Chomsky%20-%20Audio%20Book%20-%20Noam%20Chom sky%20-%20At%20Johns%20Hopkins%20University.mp3/

I would give the above link a rank of "7", because the last time I searched for it, 7 people replied they had it. I have several hashes with a score of 80-90, meaning you're more likely to find or download them, but the above is the only one I have that I have enough confidence in that the data is uncopyrighted.

So now you have one link to a hash - where can you find trusted sources which tell you what hashes are ubiquitous, making it more likely you will find and be able to download them, are rated in terms of quality by multiple sources and so forth? Well for Gnutella, one source is Bitzi. You can search for data there, see what is the most reported, what things are ranked, see comments, see bit rates, file sizes, artists, titles and so forth. It is very cool. Most interaction is from Bitzi into Shareaza (the only Gnutella client that does this currently), but from within Shareaza if you find a file you can type "find Bitzi ticket" and see if the hash has been reported on already. One thing which I'm sure will soon be remedied is that Bitzi does not have direct clickthrough to Shareaza, I have to copy hashes to my clipboard, edit them to Shareaza format and paste them into Shareaza. I'm sure soon Shareaza and Bitzi will agree on a standard and remove this step so I can just click through. And soon Gnutella clients other than Shareaza will have this ability as well. Bitzi's data base is open to the public, you can read their open data policy on their web site, anyone is free to use the data as long as Bitzi is credited. Bitzi.com is the only large, good source of Gnutella hashes I know of. Edonkey2000 has had hashes for a while, and has several good, large sources for hashes such as Filenexus.com and Sharereactor.com. Since Gnutella is a larger network and it just implemented this ability, I'm sure it will have even more and larger sources in addition to Bitzi. And since Bitzi's database is open to all, if Bitzi goes down someone else can open the database up again somewhere else. I'm sure in the future, even the trusted rating system will become distributed.

Gnutella uses the sha1 hash, Edonkey2000 uses another, and Kazaa uses another. Web sites exist that centralize the hashes for these. I'm sure soon web sites will exist that coalesces and translates all of this. Gordon Mohr, who runs Bitzi, wants to see a universal p2p tag, magnet, which is agnostic about which p2p backend it is using. Why not? We can have a tag that we (more or less) trust, and can retrieve the data from Gnutella, FastTrack, Edonkey2000 or Freenet. It's a great idea.

I am less interested in other p2p networks than Gnutella but I'll discuss their hash and meta-data web sites a little. The most interesting one is Edonkey2000, which as I said, has come to specialize in large (100MB+) files, and which I have to admit is a pretty good way to download large files with some guarantee of integrity. There are two major meta data sites for Edonkey - Filenexus and Sharereactor. There are other sites as well. If you're looking for large files, they do a pretty good job currently.

Fasttrack (Kazaa) uses hashing, but the Kazaa client is not that friendly to this kind of thing. So Fasttrack/Kazaa is more of a pain in this respect than any of the others. Nonetheless, you can download a program called Sig2dat that helps you copy and paste FastTrack's UUhashes. The you can go to web sites that give meta data, rankings and so forth to these hashes. Kazaa/FastTrack is unfriendly to all of this so it is much more of a pain - you have to install files that help you do this (sig2dat), you have to restart Kazaa for every file you want to download in this fashion and so forth. With Kazaa, all of this is a hassle, it's much easier to do in Gnutella (Shareaza), Edonkey2000 and Freenet.

And lastly there is Freenet. Freenet has been using hashes since the beginning. Freenet is a publishing network, not a file sharing network. That is nomenclature - file can be and are shared on Freenet - from html pages to gifs and jpgs, to mp3's, to avi's, although Freenet is the last place you want to look for large files, Freenet's bailiwick is small files. Even a 4 meg mp3 on Freenet is harder to find and slower to download than any of the other 3 networks. Small files are the domain of Freenet - HTML pages and images. The Freenet protocol is more rich than the other protocols in many ways, thus you have more than just audio and video files going over it, you have third-party applications utilizing it, thus you have things like Fproxy (A world-wide web equivalent which runs over Freenet) and Frost and Freenet message board (Usenet equivalents - both for text and binaries). One benefit of Freenet is it's hard to crack down on people for publishing information - because no one knows who data is coming from or going to. This is not absolute, but it is much safer than the file sharing p2p networks in this respect. Also, people publish data, so that what you put out is stored somewhere other than your computer, and if your web site or shared file or whatnot is popular, it will be out there all the time without your node needing to be connected. Freenet also used a lot of signatures, encryption and so forth, so you already have a pretty solid trust mechanism and data integrity. It depends on what hash is used - KSK hashes are insecure, but SSK are signed. So with Freenet there are large upsides and downsides - the downsides are downloading is much slower, since you're downloading via intermediaries, not directly, and the larger the file, the slower the download and the harder it is to find a complete file. The upshot of Freenet is that there is less of a legal risk with regards to sharing/publishing data, data is signed by the publisher which greatly helps integrity, and also Freenet's protocol allows extensions other than file sharing with it's own internal network - web and Usenet like applications, and I'm sure there will be more in the future.