Metalinks Tries to Simplify Downloads

ant_tmwx writes "Metalinks collect information about files in an XML format used by programs that download. The information includes mirror lists, ways to retrieve the file on P2P networks, checksums for verifying and correcting downloads, operating system, language, and other details. Using Metalinks details the Free Software programs you can use to download them with. There are also clients on Mac and Windows. With a list of multiple ways to download a file, programs can switch to another method if one goes down. Or a file can be downloaded from multiple mirrors at once, usually making the download go much faster. Downloads can be repaired during transfer to guarantee no errors. All this makes things automatic which are usually not possible or at least difficult, and increases efficiency, availability, and reliability over regular download links. OpenOffice.org, openSUSE, and other Linux/BSD distributions use them for large downloads."

Comments

Browser clients available?

[MMC Monster]

Are there clients that integrate (ie: extensions) for Firefox, IE, Safari, and Opera? If there is proper integration with these clients (meaning seamless downloading without opening third party download managers), this might actually go well.

It's bad enough when I tell my dad to download a torrent and he complains that a torrent manager client pops up; especially when he doesn't realize that closing the window may not stop the torrent.

Re:Who says it can't use BitTorrent also?

[Jonah Hex]

It does not look like it excludes ANY type of file transfer, if your client supports it you can do it is how it looks to me.

Example - MetaLink XML contains the following formats:
5 different HTTP sites
2 FTP sites
3 BitTorrent Trackers
eMule/Edonkey Hash

Example - Client One has implemented:
HTTP, FTP and BitTorrent

Example - Client Two has implemented:
BitTorrent and eMule

Example - Client Three has implemented:
HTTP, FTP, BitTorrent and eMule

I'm surprised it's taken this long to come up with this sort of client independant format.

Jonah HEX

Re:Needless extra step?

[grumbel]

### Bittorrent already does this just about as effectively as this idea will.

If the tracker goes down or there happens to be a lack of seeds the link is dead. With Metalink on the other side a client could automatically use *all* ways to get a file, not just a single tracker or server, but multiple http servers, P2P networks and torrent all at the same time, if one goes down there might still be plenty of others left.

### Once again, bittorrent is just as easy. And its OS agnostic.

But not protocol or server agnostic.

### To me, this looks like a solution in search of a problem.

Ever tried to download a file from Sourceforge or any other server with a dozens of mirrors which you have to manually select? That is exactly the problem that Metalink solves, its a standard way to show where the mirrors are, completly independent of the protocol in use. Thus it allows the client to automatically select them or use them all at the same time for faster download, no more stupid manual mirror selection just to find out that the host is down or slow as hell.

Metalink doesn't try to replace bittorrent, quite the opposite, it tries to provide a way to simply bundle all links that lead to the same file, torrent included.

Re:Needless extra step?

[TheRaven64]

BitTorrent has two major disadvantages:

1. It is fundamentally inefficient. The overall overhead of using BitTorrent on the Internet is greater than direct downloads.[1]
2. It uses the most expensive bandwidth for distribution. Consumer upload bandwidth is the most scarce and about the most expensive bandwidth you can buy

The only advantage of BitTorrent is that you (the content provider) aren't paying for as much of the bandwidth. On the other hand, bandwidth bought in bulk is so cheap that it's really not worth if for most people.

This system, however, would allow me to easily download automatically from the mirror closest to me. It would also be pretty easy using a little ECMAScript to grab the correct mirror using the browser's locale and present a direct download link.

[1] Actually, it's a pretty horrible protocol. It doesn't do anything with location information, so it adds a lot of extra load to the backbones. It uses TCP, so it will never support multicast without a fundamental redesign, and the algorithms for rate distribution have some fundamental flaws.