Gnutella2?

Anenga writes "A Windows (and somewhat WINE compatible) Gnutella client, Shareaza, has released a public preview of its next version which includes a re-designed Gnutella protocol they call "Gnutella2". Gnutella2 (or "G2") dumps the Gnutella broadcast model and uses a new global searching method with UDP connections. It also features compression to limit hub-to-hub (G2 Ultrapeers) bandwidth, Tiger Tree Hashing etc. Shareaza has released a small description of the revised protocol here, but plans to release a full spec to the GDF after the release of v1.7 Final. Gnutella2, which is really a revised Gnutella protocol, will also be free and open for anyone to use in their clients. Shareaza and G2 may give Gnutella - an open and free P2P protocol which has been struggling to keep up with the times against Kazaa, eDonkey and other P2P spin-offs - the stability and power it needs to attract the closed and commercial FastTrack Network users when or if the network folds."

Comments

The Gnutella innovation I like

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the Gnutella Web Caching System. It allows clients to find other gnutella peers without any sort of central gnutella server.

Re:Other OS P2P technologies

[iofire]

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned it, but giFT is a very nice open protocal modeled after the fasttrack network. (originally it used the actual fasttrack network, but now they use an open protocol called OpenFT)
Check it out at http://gift.sourceforge.net
The ncurses based frontend giFTcurs is very nice, but there also are graphical and even web-based frontends to it.
I use it under linux and have been very happy with it.

Gnutella2 - The real story!

[smd4985]

I'm a engineer at Lime Wire LLC so I can debunk much of this submission. Shareaza's Gnutella2 isn't so much the second iteration of Gnutella - instead, think of it as a improved Gnutella . In fact, the improvements were actually proposed by Lime Wire LLC (consult the GDF and look for messages about 'GUESS'). The GUESS protocol is a UDP based protocol we developed to allow for Gnutella network crawls/walks. We introduced it for public comment on the GDF *before* releasing it because we understand that Gnutella, as a open protocol, needs support from all Gnutella developers. I'm not sure what exactly Shareaza has implemented (because they HAVE NOT released the specs yet), but it sounds a lot like GUESS.

So this isn't so much Gnutella2 as a improved Gnutella. Perhaps one day it will evolve into Gnutella2 more formally, but at the moment this talk of Gnutella2 is premature.

Re:Gnutella2 - The real story!

[Adam Fisk]

On the spyware topic, we originally started bundling software purely out of the need to survive -- we needed to bring in money, or we would have closed down. Since then, we came out with LimeWire Pro and now only bundle TopMoxie with LimeWire, and it's an optional install. TopMoxie really is not spyware in the way people typically use that word. It basically does one thing -- it has affiliate programs with multiple web sites, and when you visit those sites, it pops up a really innocuous window (that times out and disappears) asking you if you would like your purchase to support LimeWire. If you click yes, we get the affiliate revenue. If you ignore it or don't notice it, nothing happens. TopMoxie is primarily used by schools and charities to raise money for them.

So, the short answer is that we would prefer not to bundle anything. As a result, we now only bundle one program that we feel is really innocuous to the user and that they have the option not to install. On all operating systems other than Windows, LimeWire has no bundled software.

Re:Kazaa vs. eDonkey

[Arker]

If you have a *nix box (even an apple if it's OS X) you can use mldonkey which is a very nice client. You can operate it remotely from another box, it uses both edonkey and overnet protocols simultaneously, it's partially open source (there is a key component kept secret for security reasons, the one flaw in thes protocols is that they require trusted clients unfortunately) and it really gives you the best of edonkey and overnet both, as well as supporting the move to overnet since anything you're downloading from edonkey or sharing out will also be shared to overnet.

Re:Hopefully downloads are better with G2...

[fault0]

> I even got my girlfriend, boss, and brother using Bearshare.

Congratulations, you made them install quite a bit of spyware too.

I would recommend something like XoloX, which has absolutely no spyware.

Re:Kazaa vs. eDonkey

[Jugalator]

Same progress for me - i.e. Kazaa to eDonkey to Overnet. The biggest advantage with eDonkey over Kazaa IMHO are the "MD5 URL's" or whatever you should call them, where clicking on an URL adds the download to the eDonkey queue, by using the MD5-style checksum. So you're 100% sure it's not a fake file. You can also be 100% sure that's it's not a partial file as well.

I guess the downside with eDonkey is that it requires up to date server lists, although that's a minor hassle really. And that's where the serverless Overnet comes in, which owns Kazaa any time except for the occasional music searches perhaps.

Gnucleus & GnucDNA

[DeadBugs]

Gnucleus has been a solid Gnutella client for me.

They are also working on GnucDNA a component for building your own P2P applications.

Re:Crossing fingers

[0x0d0a]

Yup. Raphael Manfreti (of gtk-gnutella fame) and the Limewire team (also major GDF developers), get no credit, and these "Sharezilla" wankers get a Slashdot link.

Well, *here* is credit where credit's due:

GTK-gnutella

LimeWire

Gnutella started out as an "interesting project". It is now one of the most heavily developed an analyzed projects -- somewhat less centralized than the Freenet project, but far more skill (and variety of clients) on this than, say, FastTrack and the much-lauded Kazaa.

Re:How exactly does TopMoxie work?

[Adam Fisk]

The difference is in the link. In your example, the user links to Amazon from another web site. In this case, TopMoxie does nothing. If the user goes directly to Amazon by typing it in a web browser, though, TopMoxie does prompt the user for whether or not he or she would like the commission to go to LimeWire.