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Gnutella 0.5c Still Going? UPDATED - NO

Posted by Hemos on from the get-it-while-you-can dept.

Tridus writes, "While popping around fileforum looking for new software, I happened to notice a link to Gnutella. I guess Justin and the other guys at Nullsoft aren't quite licked yet. " Update: 03/21 01:40 by E : I've been told by the folks from Winamp that this is the same code as before - sorry all - the letters simply referred a testing legacy.

3 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. Another post by me... (karma whore?) by pen · · Score: 4
    Here's a short summary of why Gnutella rocks and how it compares to Napster.

    Napster is client-server. Everyone connects to the main server, drops off their list of files, and the searching is done through the server.

    Gnutella is peer-to-peer. All packets are routed around the gnutellaNet. Each client is also a server. Together, it's a "servant". The whole thing works very much like the Internet itself. Each search request has a TTL. Each servant routes the search request to every servant he's connected to, subtracting 1 from the TTL. When TTL reaches 0, the search request is no longer forwarded.

    Now, the best part(s). It isn't centralized. You only need to know of one working servant IP to connect to the network. When you connect, the servant sends you a list of all the servants it knows of, so you are immediately supplied with a list of working servant IPs. If you connect at least once a week, you're set.

    Also, Gnutella isn't MP3-only. Any file type is supported.

    Now, the bad parts.

    • Regex (regular expression) searches are not supported. I've yet to figure out exactly how the searching works, but it doesn't match any pattern i can think of. I think it searches inside of files as well?
    • It doesn't seem scale well at all.
    • There is a crowd of kiddies using a pre-written Perl script to flood the network.
    Hopefully, all of these problems (and all the interface glitches I didn't mention since this is still a beta) will be fixed in 1.0. Oh yeah... hopefully, there will be a 1.0.

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  2. Freenet by Sanity · · Score: 5
    Thanks for your outline of how Gnutella locates information. I have spent over 18 months working on a system called Freenet which seems to have similar aims to Gnutella (peer-to-peer, no centralised server) but is much more sophisticated. It does scale well (in fact, the bigger the network, the faster it is!), and it incorporates intelligent caching and mirroring. It is also designed to make it difficult to find out who is doing what on the system. Feel free to take a look at our homepage.

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  3. Actually... by pen · · Score: 5
    Gnutella 0.50c is quite stable, and the unofficial official page is hosted by Nerdherd here (as mentioned by the post). A number of clones are also in the works, and the protocol has been reverse-engineered. All info is on the page.

    However, it's recommended that you do all your stuff before 3 PM, because that's when the kiddies come home from school, and the flooding begins. Gnutella currently has absolutely no provision for flood protection, and effects are severe. I guess I've just encouraged them more... heh.

    Another good source for stuff is #gnutella on EFNet. There is also #gnutelladev on EFNet. Please don't go to the second channel unless you have some question about the interal workings. All other questions should be directed to #gnutella. Also, #gnutella is a good place to find the available hosts. Here's one, digdug.dyndns.org. Let's see what happens to my dialup. :)

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