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Gnutella2 Specs - Part 1
Mr Fodder writes "The first part of the Gnutella2 specs are finally up." Our previous Gnutella2 story has a little more information.
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By "monitoring" requests in limewire or by putting in ambiguous search terms, I estimate that well, well, well over 99% of files available through gnutella-based p2p services are copyrighted.
Oh yes, we all have heard the usual arguments. Technology doesn't break the law, people do. Aka, the Pontius Pilate / Eichmann defense.
[snip]
Actually, what I personally find more frustrating is that when you actually do find what you want, the download fails because either the host drops offline or refuses to accept the connection. Another little irritant is the large number of files out there that are deliberately misnamed so that when you download and open them, you find yourself dropped into someone's personal porn site, regardless of what you're looking for. I used to look for cool stuff like the blooper videos and whatnot, but I got one to many that was deceptively named. Not worth the effort, really...I uninstalled the damn thing and quit trying.
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
Is there a feedback rating in the Gnutella protocol? Wouldn't it be nice to mark a file+sharer -1, Fake. The more "-" the file gets, the lower it is in the result list. And the sharer should be punished, although I don't know how.
J.
As a developer of open-source software for the OPEN Gnutella protocol, I find publishing of THE Gnutella2 spec by ONE development team laughable. The spec may be revealing about how the latest Shareaza client works, but to say it describes Gnutella2 is NOT true. The Shareaza guys simply use Gnutella to boostrap their new 'Shareaza1' network, they haven't redefined the Gnutella protocol.
The truth is that Gnutella2 is on the way, but not from Shareaza. Gnutella2 is a loose connection of various enhancements to the Gnutella network that have been implemented over the last year or so by SEVERAL COOPERATING Gnutella vendors. The latest enhancement is GUESS, which was introduced before Shareaza's new searching methodology and seems to be Shareaza's inspiration.
The Shareaza people continue to attempt to preempt Gnutella as THEIR protocol, when in fact they are pretty much branching off from the network. Shareaza should feel free to leave the OPEN Gnutella network, but please don't try to steal a name that belongs to the users and developers of Gnutella.
smd4985
Then lets hear you? I haven't seen any replies in the GDF from Limewire on the spec yet. You find that specs being released by Shareaza are laughable, but what about when Limewire proposes their GUESS proposal? Or "CHORD" proposal? Didn't "one development team" work on those? Sure, you released it before actually implamenting it, but still... the rest of the GDF just questioned about it, you were really the only development team. People don't say "Gnutella's GUESS proposal" they say "Limewire's GUESS proposal".
Can Limewire stop saying that? Which is totally and utterly untrue?!! Mike was working on G2 long before you sent him your spec on GUESS. He told you in a private e-mail that he was working on it before hand, and that he would probably release his with GUESS.
And the specs released today are **VERY DIFFERENT** from your damn GUESS proposal.
Oh, and what about your Remote Queueing feature? Shareaza founded that, and it's included in Limewire. Mike wants to cooperate, but your not giving him a chance.
"Shareaza People"? There is only one developer for Shareaza, Mike. Shareaza supports G1 and G2, it supports "Gnutella".
P2P most certainly DOES have legitimate applications... Ever hear of Bit Torrent?
Essentially, the idea is this: When you are downloading a file, when you receive a packet of data, you now have that packet of data, and there's no reason you can't immediately share that packet of data.
So, people downloading something from a Bit-Torrent capable site are themselves distributing the content... as it is being downloaded!
The end result is that a huge number of clients can download content (iso images, etc) from a site without increasing the total bandwidth usage of the site by much at all.
Check it out - it's pretty amazing!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Calling Gnutella2 the "next revolution in P2P" would be like calling the latest model in horse-pulled carriages the "next revolution in transportation" years after the advent of the motor car.
The original program was not as many people mistakenly assumed (due to the name) free software, it was closed source windows software, that other people had to reverse engineer, the design was fairly shoddy (because, as aforementioned, it was more or less a proof of concept), leaving far too much bandwidth spent on catering to people who use firewalls (and much of the time, those push requests simply get lost). Then, the countless different clone implementations tend to not-quite fit the same specifications (as each other, let alone the original), causing no end of problems.
I did use 2 or 3 different versions of Gnutella, for quite some time, probably over a year. I got lots of stuff. Of course, most of that is only half there, because of not always finding the same files again, or not being able to connect to a servent (most of the time), or stupid screw-ups where you resume a download, and find that the remote server is actually sending you something else, so you have to stop it and muck about with dd or similar to carefully cut the file back to what it was originally. Then, after a while, I noticed not only people who were putting up lots of copies of the exact same file (eg an advert for some site) under numerous different (and totally misleading) filenames (and also files that appeared to be proper files, even having pretty large file sizes, which turned out to be just windoze URL files, padded with vast amounts of space), but even, hacked up servents, that would return numerous different responses to any query you could come up with. EG, search for FOO BAR and they would return exactly FOO_BAR.mpg, FOO_BAR.htm, FOO_BAR.jpg, FOO_BAR.mp3, FOO_BAR.exe, and eventually, more cunning variations. I'm sure there were other similar things done by crackers and spammers, et al, but I can't remember them all.
BUT, ultimately, the thing that makes the Gnutella network broken most of all, to my mind, is the sheer LEGIONS of such utter CRETINS who have not the slightest idea what they are doing, flooding the network with queries that are almost GUARANTEED to return absolutely f**k all, because they simply do not get how the queries are matched. If they did, they would probably still not be able to get it right.
A few months ago, I pretty much stopped using Gnutella, as the network seemed to be getting progressively worse, and I seemed to be able to get less and less (and yes, I did used to share some files- ones that people seemed to want, too). I tried looking into various other P2P type networks, like GiFT and Freenet, and GNUnet, but felt badly let down by what I found. After a while, I tried having another look at Gnutella, and it was so screwed up it made me feel sick. The flood of bad queries (now including torrents of empty queries, about 80%, I'd say) was even worse, and trying to search for anything yielded almost exclusively the spam responses. I kind of got the feeling that maybe groups like the RIAA/MPAA could have been deliberately creating the noise and spam themselves, to try to make the network worthless. After about ten or fifteen minutes of searching, I gave up in dispair. As far as I'm concerned, Gnutella is dead.
Well, if someone proposes a new version, and it addresses most of these problems, IMO it would really be best if it broke compatibility. Nice clean break. Well, there's my 42 pence worth, flame away, all.
Be careful! New moon tonight.