Gnutella2 Specifications

An anonymous reader writes "After lots of heated debate regarding Gnutella2, (first story and more recent story), the specifications have finally been released. There is a mirror here. Let the debates begin."

Comments

Great!

[Linux-based-robots]

I can use this to share all my Linux warez with impunity!! Ha ha GPL take that! I'm sharing and there's nothing you can do about it!! NOTHING!

GENIUS

[JanusFury]

Slashdot the specs so nobody can develop clients! That's absolute genius. I wonder how much Hilary Rosen is paying Taco for this? ;)

Re:GENIUS

[Dog and Pony]

And with the dupes we can keep it down for weeks! :)

The "About" information

[Berylium]

For those of you who don't want to pop over to the site. Or if it get's slashdotted (which would be odd).

What is Gnutella2?
Gnutella2 is a modern and efficient peer-to-peer network standard and architecture designed to provide a solid foundation for distributed global services such as person to person communication, data location and transfer and other future services.

Why is it needed?
Peer to peer technologies have become mainstream over recent years, and there are already a significant number of P2P networks in various stages of development and operation.

How does yet another network help?
Gnutella2 is unique amongst the currently operating peer to peer networks in several important ways:
* Many of the most successful networks are "closed", owned by a single entity with restrictions or fees constituting a barrier to participation. This is not a viable model for an open, general purpose network. Gnutella2 is an open architecture where anyone is welcome to participate and contribute. The network has been designed to allow such diversity without the need for messy hacks or compromises in integrity.
* The majority of networks are devoted to a single purpose, often the sharing of files. This is certainly a popular application for peer to peer technology, but it is by no means the only application. Gnutella2 is designed as a general purpose network which can be used as a solid foundation for any number of different peer to peer applications - vanilla file sharing, communications tools or other ideas which are yet to be conceived.
* Some peer to peer networks have been developed with similar general purpose goals, however they have been unable to compete in the most popular application of the day, which is file sharing. For a general purpose network to succeed, it must be able to compete with purpose-specific networks in the most popular purpose. Gnutella2 is not only able to compete with the current popular file sharing specific networks, it outperforms them.

What About "Old Gnutella"?
The original "Gnutella" was created several years ago as a very simple, single vendor file-sharing specific network. Its simplicity made it a popular platform for file sharing application developers; however this simplicity also critically limited its effectiveness. As a result, competing file-sharing specific networks slowly but surely took over as the tools of choice as Gnutella users became frustrated with poor performance and turned elsewhere.
The original Gnutella[1] network was designed for a very limited purpose and, despite many changes over the years, remains limited today. Efforts to make it a better file sharing network continue with mixed success.
Gnutella2 shares the "Gnutella" name, striving to create the network that Gnutella should have been from the beginning. It shares the adopted ideals of openness and cooperation, but offers a fresh start that was sorely needed. The crippling limitations of the old network have been left behind and replaced with an entirely new network architecture ready to grow and develop through the creative efforts of many.

What is the Scope of Gnutella2?
The single name "Gnutella2" really refers to two separate components: Gnutella2 the Standard and Gnutella2 the Network.
The Gnutella2 Network is perhaps the most easily recognised component. It is a new high-performance peer to peer network architecture upon which a variety of distributed applications can be built, such as file sharing applications, communication tools, etc.
The Gnutella2 Standard is a set of requirements for building applications which operate on the Gnutella2 network in different capacities. It specifies the minimum compliance level required to be recognised as a Gnutella2-compatible application. Compliance with a Gnutella2 Standard ensures participating applications provide a minimum acceptable level of service to other network participants.

Re:The "About" information

[Adam Fisk]

Gnutella2, or "Mike's Protocol," has some interesting properties. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Gnutella, however. It's a separate protocol that is bootstrapping off of the Gnutella name to do things like get on Slashdot, and everyone here is falling for it.

Characterizations of Gnutella as a simple, old protocol reflect a woeful ignorance of the many innovations that have emerged from Gnutella. In fact, much of Mike's Protocol calls "Gnutella 2" are innovations developed on Gnutella itself. These aren't simply close copies -- the protocols he cites are, in fact, Gnutella protocols. There are many more innovations happening on Gnutella as we speak, and the highjacking of the Gnutella name by Mike has weakened the fabric of an otherwise strong and open development community.

We should all support open networks by supporting Gnutella. Gnutella2 offers interesting alternatives, but is no better than the work currently occurring on Gnutella. What's more, few if any Gnutella developers will ever support Gnutella2 because of the divisive way that it was introduced, permanently fracturing the Gnutella community, with almost all of the Gnutella community still working on Gnutella because they were never told of the so-called Gnutella2 until it was slashdotted, much as we're seeing today.

If you support open protocols, support the original Gnutella. Gnutella2 does not solve any problems not currently solved by the original Gnutella clients. It simply creates division.

Re:The "About" information

[afree87]

Linux, or "Linus' Operating System", has some interesting properties. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Minix, however. It's a separate protocol that is bootstrapping off of the Minix name to do things like get on Slashdot, and everyone here is falling for it.

Characterizations of Minix a simple, old operating system reflect a woeful ignorance of the many innovations that have emerged from Gnutella. In fact, much of what Linus' Operating System calls "Linux" are innovations developed on Minix itself. These aren't simply close copies -- the protocols he cites are, in fact, Minix protocols. There are many more innovations happening on Minix as we speak, and the highjacking of the Minix name by Linus has weakened the fabric of an otherwise strong and open development community.

We should all support open operating systems by supporting Minix. Linux offers interesting alternatives, but is no better than the work currently occurring on Minix. What's more, few if any Minix developers will ever support Linux because of the divisive way that it was introduced, permanently fracturing the Minix community, with almost all of the Minix community still working on Minix because they were never told of the so-called Linux until the first release came out, much as we're seeing today.

If you support open protocols, support the original Minix. Linux does not solve any problems not currently solved by the original Minix operating system. It simply creates division.

Re:The "About" information

[havaloc]

As a person who purchased the Limewire Pro version twice, I have to disagree with Adam Fisk's FUD. As a longtime user of Limewire (indeed, even the recent versions), I'm saddened by this FUD. I'm now a happy Shareaza user.

Why would Shareaza want to bootstrap off the Gnutella name? To me, Gnutella certainly embodies a spirit of openess, but it also reminds me of the worse performing P2P app there is (with certain exceptions).

Gnutella2, no matter how you feel about the name, simply out performs many of the current P2P programs out there, including the newest version of Limewire. It is also developed at a much faster pace than most clients, and its free. Its also free of ads and spyware.

To say that Gnutella2 offers nothing better than Gnutella just doesn't seem true to me. I can tell the difference, and I'd imagine a lot of other people can too.

Limewire was touting GUESS as an enhancement to Gnutella that has been abandoned. It was for this enhancement that I registered for Limewire Pro the second time. Now, I find out that they are just going to make a few changes to the old protocol. That's not what I invested/paid for.

I also think its silly that the Gnutella community at large refuses to even look at this new protocol because of the way it was introduced. It was introduced because we are all sick of the slow pace of development in the Gnutella community. On the internet, 6 months might as well be 2 years.

Until I see otherwise, classic Gnutella is all but dead. It's inefficient, with a limited horizon, and traffic intensive.

I'm also sorry that I registered and supported Limewire.

Re:The "About" information

[freeweed]

Why would Shareaza want to bootstrap off the Gnutella name?

Same reason it's bootstrapping off the Kazaa name? :)

Re:The "About" information

[Adam Fisk]

An interesting parody. The big difference? Linux represented a huge leap forward because it was open source. Gnutella 2 is not a leap forward. It does things like arbitrarily create a new, completely unstandardized messaging system. As any Gnutella developer knows, the problems facing Gnutella, as with most p2p systems, have little to do with the underlying messages. They have to do with topology and the intelligence of the algorithms. Changing every Gnutella message does nothing to address these issues.

Linux also didn't hijack the Unix name (don't try to make the case that "Linux" is a varient of "Minix"). Everyone was using the Unix name for all sorts of Unix variants. Gnutella 2 is a marketting stunt, and you are furthering that stunt right now. Honestly, if you knew more about what you were doing, I think you'd be embarrassed about your above comment.

Re:The "About" information

[judd]

Um.

First you say "It has nothing whatsoever to do with Gnutella, however. It's a separate protocol that is bootstrapping off of the Gnutella name."

Then you say "[Mike's Gnutella2 improvements] are innovations developed on Gnutella itself. These aren't simply close copies -- the protocols he cites are, in fact, Gnutella protocols"

These statements appear to be contradictory.

Re:The "About" information

[Adam Fisk]

I am sorry to hear that you have been disappointed with your experiences with LimeWire. We are working hard to create the best technology possible, and we have a road map that we feel will soon make LimeWire the best performing p2p application available.

You are clearly an informed user, so I will go into the details of LimeWire/Gnutella development as well as more detailed reasons for my above comments. I and Susheel Daswani wrote the original GUESS protocol, and we very openly shared our ideas regarding GUESS with Mike in particular, having no idea that there would be consequences for our openness. GUESS is fully implemented in LimeWire and has been for some time. We have not released that implementation for reasons that are vital to this conversion, including:

1) After extensive *collaboration* with the rest of the Gnutella community, we came to the realization that any UDP-based protocol would almost surely require a custom flow control layer to be written on top at some point down the road. Without this layer, congestion will simply starve all TCP connections of any available bandwidth, as TCP will continually backoff as UDP indiscriminately consumes the released bandwidth. This is bad for the use. Developing a flow control layer is a significant burden to the developer. Mike's Protocol does not do this, and it will cause congestion on the Internet as a result. It will also be one of the primary reasons that few developers will code for it.

2) We came to the realization that we could achieve the same efficiency gains with a far safer TCP implementation. This implementation relys on selective querying (dynamically adjusting the reach of a query based on the popularity of the content being searched for), as well as the exchanging of file indexes between Ultrapeers to limit traffic. This implementation is also significantly simpler than UDP-based architectures, and does not pose the same security concerns. We may at some point use GUESS for specific purposes, but we will likely not make GUESS the primary search architecture because we are able to achieve the same efficiency gains by better and more responsible means.

In short, we did not rush our client out the door using GUESS because our open collaboration with other developers led us to realize that better solutions were available and that a raw UDP solution was, in fact, dangerous in terms of network congestion, and even irresposible to network administrator everywhere attempting to cope with bursts of UDP traffic. Becuase Mike did not develop his protocol openly, he was unable to do this.

Mike's Protocol is able to use this architecture in large part because it's network is so small. It's possible that it scales better than I think it does, but I doubt it. The search architecture story tells much about why open protocols make sense -- because everyone collaborates to develop the best protocol possible.

Best,

Re:The "About" information

[Adam Fisk]

Good point. I was a little worked up when I wrote that message -- I usually get overly worked up when this topic comes up =). Basically, I see Gnutella 2 as an fine protocol that has been proprietary for most of its history. I applaud Mike for getting the specs out there, but I still don't appreciate his decision to coopt the Gnutella name without any consultation with anyone who actually wrote clients for the Gnutella network. I don't like it when I and the volunteer work of thousands of people in the rest of the Gnutella community see their work taken advantage of by an opportunist.

Re:The "About" information

[Anenga]

An interesting parody. The big difference? Linux represented a huge leap forward because it was open source. Gnutella 2 is not a leap forward. It does things like arbitrarily create a new, completely unstandardized messaging system. As any Gnutella developer knows, the problems facing Gnutella, as with most p2p systems, have little to do with the underlying messages. They have to do with topology and the intelligence of the algorithms. Changing every Gnutella message does nothing to address these issues.

Gnutella1 doesn't work. Gnutella2 does. That seems like a leap forward to me. I could go on to explain why G1 doesn't work and G2 does, but I'd be here all night. Just because Gnutella2 introduces a new packet structure or complex systems such as hub clustering, doesn't move away from the fact that it works better than Gnutella1. The G2 specs isn't just about changing subsystems such as packet structure or changing "Ultrapeers" to "Hubs", it's much more than that. Perhaps you should read them.

Linux also didn't hijack the Unix name (don't try to make the case that "Linux" is a varient of "Minix"). Everyone was using the Unix name for all sorts of Unix variants. Gnutella 2 is a marketting stunt, and you are furthering that stunt right now. Honestly, if you knew more about what you were doing, I think you'd be embarrassed about your above comment.

I think you use the word "hijack" too lightly. Hijack means steal something someone else owned. Did you own Gnutella? Legally, Mike didn't do anything wrong. Regarding morally, Mike did first propose G2 to the GDF in hopes of getting the GDF to accept it and move the entire existing gnutella community forward. The GDF pushed G2 out, and thus it became a seperate competing entity. Perhaps Mike could of changed it, but many disagree. Including Swabby of Gnucleus.

Honestly, if you look at yourself rejecting a superior protocol over your rule of an existing stale one, you'd be embarassed of yourself. You've played with GUESS for God knows how long, that failed. Now it's on to outdegree, something G2 introduced. Lets just step down from our high-horses and enter reality and work towards something which your customers can be prowed of.

Re:The "About" information

[Adam Fisk]

This is a scary conversation to get into, but here goes. We're probably both a bit overly fanatical in our viewpoints. MP offers interesting ideas, and it does work well. I think that the underlying technology of Gnutella is significantly more sound, as I've outlined in other threads. To say that "MP works and Gnutella doesn't" is clearly ridiculous. I definitely don't own Gnutella, but many people have put a great deal of effort into the Gnutella network, most of their time volunteered. Those people don't deserve to have their work swept under the umbrella of "Gnutella 2" just so Shareaza can get Slashdotted.

MP was a separate entity from the beginning -- it hasn't changed significantly since it was first introduced, and the Gnutella world did not embrace it because it made no attempt to have anything to do with Gnutella other than taking it's name so we'd all be talking about it right now.

I went into the details of why we haven't released GUESS on another thread. In a nutshell, we think that TCP approaches are more robust and can achieve the same efficiency and scalability. MP had nothing to do with increasing the outdegree -- that's an idea that has been around Gnutella for years, and the most rigorous discussion I've seen for why high outdegrees are important is the following paper from the Stanford Peers folks at:

Beverly Yang and Hector Garcia-Molina. Designing a Super-Peer Network

That link doesn't seem to be working at the moment, but you can reach it from:

Stanford Peers Page

All that said, I wish MP the best. I wish it had chosen a different name, but oh well.

Re:The "About" information

[Adam Fisk]

The Tiger Tree specification was worked on and agreed by all of the members of the Gnutella community. The implementation itself is relatively trivial -- agreeing on the spec is the hard part. Even in this case, where there's a very strong, open specification for Tiger Tree exchange in the Tree Hash Exchange (THEX) protocol, Shareaza implements it slightly differently, breaking compatibility with other clients and flying in the face of the specification. You can find THEX at:

Open Content Network

THEX is an open specification developed by Gordon Mohr and Justin Chapweske. It's not Gnutella-specific, but it certainly isn't Gnutella 2.

Two questions: DRM/Flooding & Anonymous Downl

[Anonymous Coward]

Two questions:

1. Can this version prevent abuse from folks that try to flood the system with bogus or damaged files?

2. Will this version enable people to download anonymously?

Just in case one mirror ain't enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Common Gnutella2 Standard (All Applications)

All applications making use of Gnutella2 technology for any application class MUST IMPLEMENT the following core features:

* Bidirectional TCP stream connections
(stream compression OPTIONAL)
* Bidirectional reliable UDP protocol
(Gnutella2 reliability layer and stateless compression REQUIRED)
* HTTP-style link negotiation, exchanging at least the required headers
* Gnutella2 protocol support, graceful handling of unknown trees
* Localised, UTF-8 and UNICODE decode REQUIRED, encoding to each optional
* Operation in LEAF mode, additional node states OPTIONAL
* Basic link handshaking and maintenance functionality (PI/PO/LNI/KHL)
* Global node addressing scheme and routing maintenance, addressing children (TO)
* Reverse (PUSH) connection response (connecting out)
* HTTP/1.1 client and server for peer to peer transactions

Gnutella2 Standard for File Sharing

Applications making use of Gnutella2 technology for file sharing MUST IMPLEMENT the following features:

* All of the COMMON features listed in the previous section
* Operation in LEAF mode, additional node states OPTIONAL
* Some form of bandwidth management scheme to keep network and transfer bandwidth below 95% of the user's link capacity - be it manually configured or some automatic scheme (very important to avoid flooding local connection)
* SHA1 and TIGER ROOT URNs for all shared objects
* XML metadata using existing schemas where appropriate (manual entry and peer acquired at minimum, automatic local collection highly recommended, service lookup optional)
* Universal 1-bit query hash filter, at least 2^20 length, intelligent density management scheme (superset combination required if supporting hub mode)
* Gnutella2 object search mechanism, all client responsibilities and if supporting hub mode, server responsibilities too
* Local search processing including simple query language (Boolean operations, quoted search terms, numeric range searches, interest flagging (I), local rule-based metadata searching)
* Extensible hit format (URN/DN/MD/URL are REQUIRED, all other extensions OPTIONAL)
* HTTP/1.1 based upload system, URN based requesting, partial content requests, active queuing, partial file uploading, timestamp protected alternate source cache and exchange
* Tiger Tree volume calculation on shared files, caching on downloads, exchange via DIME. Local corruption detection OPTIONAL but recommended.

Start of a New Beginning

[Anenga]

This, hopefully, will be the "re-birth" of Gnutella, or at least of a new open free P2P protocol. And the fact that this protocol looks to be, and pretty much is, the most technical, feature rich and advanced protocol currently out is fantastic. I can't wait until someone adds an "Anonymous layer".

No word yet if any of the classic Gnutella clients (such as BearShare, Limewire etc.) will be adopting Gnutella2 at all (although Gnucleus has vowed to in the future). However, there are some that are open source/GPL'd, such as GTK for *NIX, Aquisition for OSX or Limewire in Java.

Incase the specs get /.'d, here is a URI (need Shareaza to download it).

magnet:?xt=urn:bitprint:PMKP57E2TXFI2Z37M3A7CJ2U 3A FICBDU&dn=Gnutella2%20Specs%20Draft.htm

Re:Start of a New Beginning

[smd4985]

The jury it still out on Gnutella2 - it isn't clear if a brand new protocol is really necessary or if Gnutella can just be extended to incorporate new features (Gnutella is pretty extensible after GGEP, etc.).

What the jury has already decided on is the bad form that the Gnutella2 developers displayed when they first stole Gnutella's name without the approval of the Gnutella community and then used Gnutella to bootstrap their fledgling network.

Re:Start of a New Beginning

[evilviper]

it isn't clear if a brand new protocol is really necessary

Gnutella0.6 cannot search all the hosts on the network without using huge ammounts of bandwidth... Changing that would mean changing the protocol. The current method of supernodes and leafs (which improves the situation, but doesn't really solve it) is just begging to be exploited, and I have no doubt it will be evetually.

What the jury has already decided on is the bad form that the Gnutella2 developers displayed when they first stole Gnutella's name without the approval of the Gnutella community and then used Gnutella to bootstrap their fledgling network.

I would not say anything was stolen (except maybe the logo from Gnutella.com, IIRC). The name belongs to no-one, and nothing is stopping someone else from naming something else "Gnutella2" as well.

Additionally, I'm tired of hearing about the "Gnutella Community". It's safe to say that there is no diffinitive gnutella community. Limewire has built their own little group gradually working on improvements, but they have no more right to the title of Gnutella2 than anyone else.

Re:Two questions: DRM/Flooding & Anonymous Dow

[spudmcduck]

1. There is a rating system that can help but not prevent this.

2. No.

Don't be fooled! It's not the 'official' Gnutella2

[Opiuman]

It is "Mike's Protocol", as mentioned at the interview linked to from the previous post.

What about the domain name?

[asv108]

The specs were only one part of the whole "Gnutella 2" debacle, which is really a misnomer since the GDF never approved the use of the Gnutella name. the registration and use of the Gnutella2 name is the biggest outrage.

For instance pretend for a second that Linus did not have the copyright for the Linux name and a coder or better yet Michael Robertson registered the domain name Linux3.com and marketed a new kernel as an official version of the Linux kernel by Linus and pushed it as the latest and greatest version of Linux.

re: Handshake Stages

[Anonymous Coward]

GNUTELLA CONNECT/0.6
Listen-IP: 1.2.3.4:6346
Remote-IP: 6.7.8.9
User-Agent: Shareaza 1.8.2.0
Accept: application/x-gnutella2
X-Ultrapeer: False

The Remote-IP header contains the IP address from which the remote host is connecting. This allows a remote host operating through some kind of network address translation system to learn its effective external address.

The Local-IP header contains the IP address and port number that the local host is listening for inbound TCP connections on. It should be listening for UDP datagrams on the same port. The format of this header is "IP:PORT", eg "1.2.3.4:6346".

Can you say DDoS? Would be fun and easy to get an entire network of gnutella clients to respond to one ip.

Combine with EMule and Overnet Instead

[Jonah Hex]

While refining the original protocol is all well and good, why not look towards intergration with other open networks now?

I've used em all, as they say, and while no one client is best for all applications I'd say the Emule development is damn close. Since it's Open Source and there are several main "production" versions from different groups plus individual modders putting out even more versions on the cutting edge of development. The best code gets quickly integrated all the way from the edge to the trunk, I've had my eye on their mod forums as well as the latest emule 27a thru 27c releases and things are really moving towards another great milestone release.

With the integration of Overnet support into EMule it now has the best of both worlds, with both public servers and client to client directories. Plus with weblink sites making it easy to find and add known good files to your queue, by batches if needed, it gives the end user the complete experiance of a mature tech.

At least Gnutella is open and may actually end up moving in this direction, I'm disappointed in hearing that the upcomming WinMX will still be closed, both their client and their network really have some good features but in the P2P world closed is death IMHO. As for me, I'll be waiting for the latest 27c EMule as modded by Sivka, my personal favorite at this time.

Jonah Hex

Re:Combine with EMule and Overnet Instead

[Inda]

With the integration of Overnet [overnet.com] support into EMule it now has the best of both worlds, ...

You sure about that? There is no mention of Overnet in the eMule changelog. You sure you aren't thinking of the eDonkey Hybrid?

Re:Combine with EMule and Overnet Instead

[traskjd]

Overnet is not currently integrated with eMule however the developers are working on it. The opcodes are in the source and it should be available in the next few versions somewhere (so I have read).

Huh?

[rlowe69]

Sorry, I'm new to this Gnutella2/Gnutella battle.

If Mike really did use the Gnutella name without permission, why doesn't someone sue him? These "products" are far too similar to be called by such similar names. For example, I'd get my ass sued if I made a new operating system and called it 'Linux2'. Unholster the IANAL's and tell me why. Or even better, get a real lawyer to tell me why.

Otherwise, stop bitching about the fact he's using the name if you aren't going to do anything about it.

This is NOT Gnutella

[sbwoodside]

To be more to the point -- this is NOT Gnutella. The Gnutella developers are not happy about the so-called "Gnutella" 2 since it goes against their wishes in many ways. Basically this one individual hijacked the name to push his own ideas.

From the last story it's pretty damned clear that "Gnutella" 2 is not going to be a particularly helpful or effective protocol. As someone who uses the real Gnutella (sometimes even for perfectly legit purposes) and thinks it works, I'll stick to the real Gnutella. It keeps getting better ...

simon

Shareazza/mp concepts

[throwaway18]

1) Shareaza works reasonably well though the lack of a usefull anti leech
mechanism is a drawback. A leaf and hub architecture is a reasonable compromise,
it usually dosn't allow searching of the whole network.
A distributed hash table architecture would allow global search but DHT is
vulnerable to an attacker with modest resources flooding the search space with
junk.

2)I'm interested in the reliable communiaction over UDP part of the protocol.

Two peers, neither of whom accept incoming connections due to connection sharing
or firewalling can't exchange files with any current p2p software.

I'm a bit surprised that no p2p project has tried to do UDP connection splicing
to allow two peers, both behind internet connection sharing (NAT) to talk to
each other. It not be possible but I havn't come across anyone who has tried at all.
It dosn't have to work for everyone to be usfull. Just allowing 10% of
NATed hosts to communicate would be worth the effort.

NAT routers usually allow outgoing UDP connections, normally the remote
machine will be listening on a UDP prt (most common use is port 53 for domain
name lookups. The local computer sends out a packet with a unique local port
number (sequentially or randomly assigned) and a remote port of 53.
When a UDP reply arrives from the internet, it also has a remote port number
of 53 and the chosen local port number. The connection sharing machine
looks at the local port number and compares it to a table of known connections.
If it matches an entry it knows which of the computers behind the NAT
it is intended for and forwards it.

In theory, if two NATed hosts send out UDP packets at the same time, using
the same port numbers the connection will penetrate the NATs. It requires the
help of another machine but in a p2p system you have plenty of machines that
can pass on some small messages.

The only problem I can see is that a NAT may change the local port number.
I hope that cheap cable/dsl routers only change the local port if necessary,
or if they do will use predicatable numbers.

This technique will also be usfull for getting through statefull firewalls.

I need to research this more. Am I missing somthing?
I'm aware that shifting files over UDP requires TCP compatible flow control
so it dosn't hog all the bandwidth.

3)Due to the number of people behind transparent proxys that hijack all outgoing
connections to port 80 and the number of people who set their filesharing
clients to listen on 80, I think is is a pity Mike didn't take the opportunity
to add a faculity to encapsulate traffic with a fake HTTP GET header so it will
go through http-only proxys. Kazaa does somthing like this.

lMule (Linux)

[antdude]

In case anyone wants to run eMule in Linux, you can get lMule (Linux port).

There is no Gnutella2 and there never will be.

[autopr0n]

The people who created Gnutella abandoned the project. No one owns the name, and anyone can call anything 'Gnutella2'.

There can never be a 'legitimate' Gnutella2 because there is no 'legitimizer' to bestow legitimacy upon it.

People should allow their protocols to grow on their own, rather then trying to take advantage of a dead name.