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The Internet

Kazaa Loses P2P Crown To Edonkey 483

Posted by samzenpus from the I-still-miss-napster dept.
I(rispee_I(reme writes "According to the network population stats at slyck, FastTrack (home of Kazaa) is no longer the most populous filesharing network. Top honors now belong to edonkey, a network of German origins. (Most edonkey users connect with emule, a gpl client for Windows)."
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Kazaa Loses P2P Crown To Edonkey More

Kazaa Loses P2P Crown To Edonkey

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  • It all makes sense now (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:01PM (#10325151)
    No wonder I can find so much David Hasselhoff stuff on edonkey.

  • Got plenty of time? eDonkey may rock. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:02PM (#10325159)
    If you're in a hurry, try something else.

    I was looking for PS2 Linux a while ago, and the only place I could
    find it was on eDonkey. 10-15 people shared it, so I started the
    download, and went out to buy a USB keyboard and mouse. After letting
    eDonkey run for about 1 week, my brand new and unused keyboard+mouse
    had collected enough dust, so I gave up and uninstalled it in frustration.
    The same day I found a guy on a DC++ Hub that had the two DVD iso's online.
    Downloaded them in a couple of hours, and had the thing installed on my PS2
    a little later the same evening.

    eDonkey may have lots of users and files, but MAAAN it's slow!

    • Re:Got plenty of time? eDonkey may rock. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by js3 ( 319268 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:08PM (#10325205)
      edonkey has an interesting race to the bottom characteristic. If you give it all your bandwidth you will end up sharing 5-10 times the size you originally intended to download. So any emule user with a clue will cap his upload bandwidth, which makes everyone else slow. Edonkey may be the place to find stuff, but it's not the place to download large binaries.

      • Re:Got plenty of time? eDonkey may rock. (Score:5, Informative)

        by rd_syringe ( 793064 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @11:55PM (#10326133) Journal
        You get higher priority to download from users that you're uploading to. The system is set up so that people trade file chunks with each other that each person is missing. Uploading more gives you overall higher priority to download.

        The "5-10 times" is highly exaggerated. Usually, I'm uploading about 1/3 to 1/2 of what I'm downloading, which is right for this network.

        eDonkey has always been the premiere place to download large binaries. You just don't find good 800+MB files on Kazaa or anything else. Often, you can determine the validity of a file on eMule just by doing a search and sorting by availability. The highest availability is always (in every case I've tried) exactly what I'm looking for. eMule even highlights high availability hashes with blue.

    • Re:Got plenty of time? eDonkey may rock. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by xQx ( 5744 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:12PM (#10325223)
      Parent is dead right.

      eD2k rewards people for uploading, but seems to reward people for sitting in queue better.

      The way to effectively get files with ed2k is with a 10GB queue of content which you just forget about for a week or two. -- It's a bit of a culture change after kazaa and napster where you immediatly start downloading files. ... but I suppose that was bound to happen when you move from exchanging 4mb mp3 files, to 4GB vob archives :)

      • Re:Got plenty of time? eDonkey may rock. (Score:5, Informative)

        by kjamez ( 10960 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @10:26PM (#10325648) Homepage
        >eD2k rewards people for uploading, but seems to >reward people for sitting in queue better.

        it rewards for not capping your upload in the software, but if you use an outgoing traffic limiting thing at the router the software knowns no different. i get the same dl speed if i'm giving my full 40k up (ack) or limiting it to 5k~10k
        • Set up your broadband router to prioritize regular or ToS MINIMIZE_DELAY packets above MAXIMIZE_THROUGHPUT packets, run mldonkey EGID mldonkey, and set your box to reclassify stuff from EGID mldonkey programs as MAXIMIZE_THROUGHPUT.

          You can use your full outbound connection, keep it constantly saturated, and it won't affect web browsing or gaming performance at all.

    • It's not a leaching network! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by node159 ( 636992 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:45PM (#10325413)
      That would be because it's not a leaching network. You get back what you put in, if you want to leech your not welcome here.

      The clients have been designed for fairness and _sharing_ rather than grab as much as you can and then go offline.

      DC on the other hand is this mentality, you can keep your leaching corrupt network.

    • Re:Got plenty of time? eDonkey may rock. (Score:5, Informative)

      by obeythefist ( 719316 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @10:57PM (#10325781) Journal
      A couple of things you need to understand about the technology before you immediately jump out and declare it to be "slow".

      Firstly, you need to open several ports on your firewall to ensure you have a "highid", which is, for our purposes here, a measure of your connectivity to the network and therefore your usefulness as an uploader.

      Secondly, you must understand that eMule uses a "credit" system. Your place on other people's queue is not simply determined on a first come first served basis. You continually jostle with other people in queues for the upload/download position. Some of the key helpers for getting a good spot in the queue: Good credit rating. If you upload a lot of stuff to the network, you will have good credit and you will quickly reach the front of the queue. Your connection speed, especially uploads, will help you. Whether you are uploading to the person you are downloading from will help. Whether you have a high-id or not (high-id's are very important!).

      eDonkey/mule is a long term download program, and should not be confused with bittorrent or DCC. Once you've been online for a while with eDonkey, you will find that you achieve downloads more quickly, and you will have a better experience.
    • Make sure your firewall is setup properly (if you don't have the right ports forwarded it's sloooow).

      eMule is not the fastest thing out there but because of the unique file ID's and the comments function I am always downloading exactly what I al looking for. Also, I never get file errors on big ISO's etc.

      Overall though I prefer Torrent but the variety of stuff isn't there.

    • The slowness is a FEATURE! (Score:4, Informative)

      by Tord ( 5801 ) <tord.jansson@gma ... minus herbivore> on Thursday September 23, 2004 @04:32AM (#10327110) Homepage
      It has seldom been pointed out, but there is a good advantage coming with this slowness:

      Files can easily live on the net without anyone having the entire file on their harddrive!

      Many odd and unusual files can be retrievable for years after anybody stopped keeping a share of them. As long as at least 10-20 people are trying to download it, there is a fair chance that they together have all the needed parts and they will stay on long enough for new people to join in and start downloading so no part of the file disappears completely.

      Sure, this is true for any smart P2P network that can start sharing before download completes, but with faster networks such as BitTorrent you much easier get incomplete files since everybody is downloading/sharing it for a much shorter time, decreasing the likelihood that the downloads overlap sufficiently to keep the file alive.

      That isn't to say that eMule doesn't have incomplete files, but they are usually the result of the original provider having taken them away too soon, before all the parts of the file had spread enough.

  • The reason? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:03PM (#10325165)
    At least in my personnal circle of friends, the reason why Kazaa usage stopped was the effective killing off of Kazaa lite.
    • Exactly. Once kazaa lite was gone, I wouldn't trust my computer to that spyware garbage. Using Apollon on linux works out well though.
    • Yes spyware was the reason I stopped using Kazaa too.

      But is Edonkey really better than Soulseeker? Soulseeker has been the biggest P2P upgrade I have seen.

    • Kazaa Lite isn't dead (Score:5, Informative)

      by ikewillis ( 586793 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:13PM (#10325233) Homepage
      Haven't heard of Kazaa Lite Resurrection [klite.prv.pl]?

    • Re:The reason? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I second (third, fourth, fifth?) that comment. I would generally use KaZaa Lite for music and Overnet for warez. Now that K-Lite is dead, I use iTunes for music and Overnet for warez.

      Please don't read this as an endorsement the RIAA. 98% of the music I download I wouldn't buy anyway. The music I WOULD buy I usually DO end up buying. Commercial software, on the other hand, is overpriced. The end of software piracy = the end of Microsoft as far as I'm concerned. In short, I buy music I like, but I thi
    • Kazaa lite is available on eDonkey.

  • So that explains the deterioration (Score:5, Funny)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:03PM (#10325166) Homepage Journal
    I've noticed a *drastic* deterioration of quality of content lately, having all those kazaa losers coming over would explain that.

    Now, being #1, means the industries will start targeting ed2k and its associated clients next.

    Greaaaat...

    • Re:So that explains the deterioration (Score:4, Informative)

      by secolactico ( 519805 ) * on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:31PM (#10325345) Journal
      industries will start targeting ed2k and its associated clients next

      That's already happening. I've seen several notices from MPAA and BSA regarding people using edonkey (I get copies of the abuse email). Usually for entire movies (600+ MB).
      • This might be a stupid question, but why haven't someone figured out a way of encrypting, or at least not sharing, the IP number of senders and recievers in a file sharing protocol? The only reason I can think of on the top of my head is that some kind of central server is needed, which must be able to handle the load of translating every users IP and thus by beeing the central point, also being vunerable to shutdown/legal actions á la Napster. Am I correct?

        I think I remember reading something about s
        • You're talking about Freenet, which is still around, but unpopular because it's dreadfully slow (among other reasons). You can't "encrypt" IP addresses because the program has to know what the actual IP address is for all the computers it's talking to; otherwise it couldn't reach them. The only solution is to proxy content through several hosts, making it impossible to track which host originated the content. That's part of what makes Freenet so slow.
          • Yes, forgot about Freenet, but that is not actually the one I was thinking about. I remember somthing that looked a lot like Kazaa or Emule (in ms windows), but was supposed to include encryption and private IPs. Can't remember the name for the sake of my life. The little I saw, it actually looked pretty decent, only problem was lack of "material".

            But your explanation of why it hasn't caught on seems to apply to my home made theories on the drawbacks. Thanks for clearing that up.
            • The little I saw, it actually looked pretty decent, only problem was lack of "material".

              The real problem with many 3rd gen P2P networks is that they do not scale. Freenet appears to work, but its hill-climbing algorithm breaks down because of the inherent inaccuracy in the routing. To a certain point, it works like a charm - the nodes form a single "hill". Past a certain point though, it just breaks down. You end up with trying to find the right sand dune in Sahara to climb. Yes, I've read the papers. No,
    • eDonkey was targetted a few months ago, if you remember Sharereactor. It was similiar to Suprnova, except instead of hosting torrents it hosted just an ed2k link with a filename and the hash. Aparently posting the hash is an infringement.

  • Open source rules again (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:03PM (#10325167)

    see what happens when you let anyone grab the code
    you get a true distributed P2P system that is free and highly expandable

    grab the source [sf.net] and make a great app even better and more secure

    • Re:Open source rules again (Score:5, Interesting)

      by pchan- ( 118053 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:50PM (#10325449) Journal
      the eMule client [emule-project.net] (an open-source clone of edonkey, for windows) is an amazing piece of software. much better than the edonkey client, and and awesome program in its own right. and since it's open source, it's about as non-evil (no spyware or other intrusive shit) as they come. there aren't many windows-specific open source programs, and few approach this caliber.

      for linux, the mldonkey client [nongnu.org] is a pretty nice daemon. i generally use kmldonkey [kmldonkey.org] as a gui for it. kmldonkey (a nice attempt to clone emule) crashes quite often, but since it is separate from the network core daemon, nothing is affected. just launch it again, and your transfers are still going.

      good stuff. super slow network, though.
    • What the best of all worlds?

      Shareaza [shareaza.com] allows eDonkey, Gnutella, Gnutella2 (Their extension) and even Bittorrent.

      It's now open source (GPL), and has a SourceForge project [sourceforge.net].

      Gnutella still rocks, Gnutella2 (G2) allows for better search results and eDonkey is another option for those of you who want to expand your options.

      Granted, it doesn't work *great* with eDonkey, but I've downloaded quite a few files from eDonkey users fine. And having one interface for Bittorrent and a normal P2P is nice.

  • More Soulseek (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SilentChris ( 452960 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:05PM (#10325178) Homepage
    Amongst the kids (which I'm no longer) Soulseek is the P2P of choice. Partially because it's so easy to find a friend's files.

    eDonkey has its place. I use it to download MST3K episodes from www.dapcentral.org. It's slow, but I've never had a single corrupt download. When you're talking 4.7 GB (in some cases) it's pretty damn good.
  • ...in the eAss!

    (boo, hiss, back to the secret bunker)

    In a related note, am I the only one who sees eMule suck up virtually all the cpu for like 10-3- second bursts? Then again, I haven't tried it at least 6 months. SOmething to do tonight (at the secret bunker).

  • Link to slycknews (Score:5, Informative)

    by kaosrain ( 543532 ) <root AT kaosrain DOT com> on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:06PM (#10325192) Homepage
    I'm not sure why the link goes to slyck.com instead of the actual news story, but the direct link is here [slyck.com]

  • spyware? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by jnapalm ( 749376 )
    Most P2P clients I've found nowadays are either spyware infested and bloated with so many unnecessary features that they consume more memory than I'm willing to give up.

    That, or there aren't enough users on the network to make it worthwhile.

    Anyone know of a decent alternative?

  • Maths? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by hereschenes ( 813329 )

    Current stats from the slyck page:

    FastTrack 2,493,637 eDonkey2K 2,402,593

    Eh?
    • the point is eMule is on the way up, and FT is on the way down. the article was anticipating what was going to happen in the near future, and /. jumped the gun.

  • Leeches suck (Score:2, Informative)

    by zarthrag ( 650912 )
    This is bad news, I've come to associate with edonkey as having zillions of files - but no one sharing them. That's why it's slower than pondwater, even on dialup. Now that word is spreading, this terrible quality will only deteriorate.

    ed2k won't be #1 for long.

    • Re:Leeches suck (Score:3, Informative)

      by secolactico ( 519805 ) *
      I gave up on edonkey, because whenever I found a file and tried to download it, it would place me in a queue, sometimes over 1500 long. You need patience to use this thing.

      On a related note, Sharezaa supports edonkey.

  • That sucks. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by acceleriter ( 231439 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:09PM (#10325211)
    Now all the Overpeers, Cyveillances, BayTSPs, and other black-helicopter traitor-to-freedom companies will be out in force on eMule.
    • One of the handy features of eMule is IP filter. You can see you're being watched and you can see who's watching you.
      • While I suppose that can't hurt, I know that if I worked for one of those modern-day Pinkertons, I'd hire people to work from home and use plain old consumer cable modem and DSL connections.

  • A GREAT open source client (Score:3, Informative)

    by spoco2 ( 322835 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:12PM (#10325225)
    My all time favourite client for accessing eDonkey, Gnutella, Gnutella 2 and Bitorrents, all in one shiney app is Shareaza [shareaza.com]. This is one great client that I've had wonderful success with. I recommend it as easy to use and very powerful.
    • Shareaza is great, but don't try downloading Bittorrent stuff with it - the implementation is awful compared to other official clients. A torrent that can easily max my DSL connection under Azureus gets only 1 or 2 KB/s under Shareaza.
      • Huh, dunno what you're doing wrong, as I have *cough* downloaded *cough cough* the three *uh huummm* SW LD rips in a timely manner... What I have noticed is that if you try and download more than ONE bittorrent through it, then you get issues... but one bittorrent at a time plus however many other types of downloads works a treat...

        Now a one bittorrent at a time limit is probably crap (I've never actually used another client), but I get my 4 and a half Gig downloads in short time, so I'm happy.

      • Re:A GREAT open source client (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Dr Reducto ( 665121 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @12:34AM (#10326321) Journal
        I heard that is because Shareaza is considered a leecher's client by Azereus, and thus Azureus will not share with Shareaza users.

  • Edonkey vs. other p2p networks (Score:5, Insightful)

    by humberthumbert ( 104950 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:12PM (#10325228)

    The reason I use ed2k (through the emule client) is that the community is by and large really into file-sharing, NOT file-trading. Hence, you can readily find years-old material for download. In pristine uncorrupted condition no less.

    P2P networks like Bittorrent and DC++ have an air
    of "grab all you can and go offline, fuck the other guy" attitude that I really detest. Not to mention that they're only really good for brand new releases...

    • Re:Edonkey vs. other p2p networks (Score:5, Insightful)

      by line.at.infinity ( 707997 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @04:55AM (#10327161) Homepage Journal
      In any network, the net total uploaded is always equivalent to the net total downloaded, so all P2P networks has the same leech to share ratio (1 to 1). Bittorrent isn't very good for file diversity though, IMHO. It's easier to share 40 gigs of esoteric files on traditional P2P networks, while for BitTorrent you'd need to run 400 simultaneous connections to servers running trackers just to make visible to the world four hundred 100 MB files that have trackers.
    • P2P networks like Bittorrent and DC++ have an air of "grab all you can and go offline, fuck the other guy" attitude that I really detest.

      Gotta admint; when I still used Kazaa I was one of thsoe folks. When I moved to BitTorrent I was at first concerned about the fact that people could download off of me while I was still downloading, myself. But I soon learned that the sharing is more than out-weighed by the benifits of being shared with. I take some small case of the warm fuzzies by helping seed other fo

  • Great... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Jim Ethanol ( 613572 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:14PM (#10325241) Homepage
    Now thanks to that statistic the hired goons of the MPAA and RIAA will be trying to break the Donkey's legs.

    "Knock, knock, who's there?
    Goons.
    Who?
    Hired goons.
    punch-beat-pummel-club-club-stab..."

  • crazy idea! (Score:5, Funny)

    by teamhasnoi ( 554944 ) <teamhasnoi@ y a h o o . c om> on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:15PM (#10325245) Journal
    Why not take ed2k, rename it 200 times, make each version have it's own separate network.

    Ideally, name them all profanely, such as fuckcock, shitcunt, ect.

    That way, you make the **AA's press releases completely useless, the evening news won't talk about it, the networks are far less likely to be full of fake files, as there are too many to police.

    Meanwhile, I will continue to use Shitwhorrent!

    It works already!

  • Oh no. btw, Kad is server-less (Score:5, Interesting)

    by real_smiff ( 611054 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:15PM (#10325249)
    I don't want to see this story reported. it'll only bring the twits in suits' attention to the lovely, stable and diverse ed2k network. At least the eMule devs saw this coming and have already built the lovely, stable and diverse Kad network. (both available in recent eMule clients).

    btw, i run eMule 24/7 serving freeware files. no I actually do, i don't share copyright stuff, got caught doing that already (watch out Movie fans! don't share those files for months on end). i'm always uploading freeware aswell so i know it's a popular distribution mechanism for that.

  • RIAA hiring programmers! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anubis333 ( 103791 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:15PM (#10325250) Homepage
    It seems that the RIAA [riaa.org] is hiring programmers to 'alter current internal software suite ('AutoSue CopyProtector') to incorporate new networks and TCP IP protocols..'

  • quality of content (Score:5, Informative)

    by rayde ( 738949 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:16PM (#10325253) Homepage
    what sets ed2k apart from kazaa is the quality of the content, and it's basically decentralized nature. Anyone is free to setup an ed2k server, plus the ed2k sister protocol, overnet (kademlia in it's eMule, open source variation) is serverless. As far as quality, everything is based on hashes, and your download results will be as accurate as the place you got the hash from.

    now, as far as speed, like many people have mentioned, it can be slow. I'm sure I'm over simplifying, but think of ed2k the same as BitTorrent, only instead of the queueing of bandwidth being for only one single file, it is for your entire list of files. It can take quite a long time to complete downloads, but knowing that you're going to get a nice, uncorrupted file makes it worthwhile.

    eMule [emule-project.net], the open source variant, contains many enhancements over the standard eDonkey [edonkey2000.com] client, and there are numerous mods in circulation. this can include Fakelist databases, ip to country checking, and the ability to tweak your bandwidth usage. there is also a web-based and mobile (cell phone) client built in so you can monitor your eMule from anywhere.

    It should be noted that there is a Legal Content Database [emule-project.net] hosted by the project, containing links to freeware/shareware and public domain stuff.

  • suprnova.org is bigger (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:16PM (#10325258)
    look at the number at the bottom on the suprnova.org website:

    181473 seeded torrents (295138 total), 2594211 seeds & 4043961 downloaders (6638172 peers), on 1317 active trackers

  • download speed (Score:2, Informative)

    by macaran ( 766186 )
    Keep in mind emule downloads are priority based, like BitTorrent. So the more you upload, the faster you'll download.

    I have no issues with emule speed; just open up your upload pipe and it should go quick enough. I normaly cap my download pipe in an hour or so.

  • For every P2P network, turn, turn, turn (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mulletproof ( 513805 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:19PM (#10325274) Homepage Journal
    "Top honors now belong to edonkey, a network of German origins.

    And it too will eventially become the focus of the RIAA, whereupon it will lose users and be knocked off of its top spot in favor of the new P2P network of the moment. maybe the KazPlat network. Who knows, but it's inevitable.

  • eMule (Score:2, Interesting)

    by hendridm ( 302246 ) *

    Most edonkey users connect with emule, a gpl client for Windows

    Please enlighten me: Why do most users use eMule? I heard that it a) has compatibility problems on the ED2K network, and b) is based on an old version of Edonkey (v60?) and does not support Horde. Is this true? I've been staying away from it as I don't want to cause problems on the wonderful network. Plus, Overnet works great.

    It sucks that Overnet/eDonkey is becoming popular. That means it will be the next to be shut down by the like

    • Re:eMule (Score:2, Informative)

      by Frenchy_2001 ( 659163 )
      eMule is perfectly compatible with the edonkey network (at least in my experience).

      It only enforces the sharing of data, as you are limited to download at maximum 5x faster than your upload and you are priority based, which means that you have a unique ID and when you upload to someone, you gain points. Hence, the more you uploaded, the more points you have (those credits are only local with the persons you uploaded to) and the higher the priority in those people's queues.

      I upload more than i DL (DSL. I h

    • Re:eMule (Score:5, Informative)

      by real_smiff ( 611054 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:40PM (#10325390)
      Er that's pretty much all wrong.

      eDonkey started it all. eMule took the eDonkey idea and made a better compatible open source client. the eDonkey devs (MetaMachine?) got upset that they could no longer make money from the ads in their old closed source client, or sell an ad-free version as they're still offering. at some point MM came out with "hybrid" which added a serverless network and various other things, including Horde, which is like swarming with smaller chunks IIRC. this was after eMule go popular i think. anyway, the two sides have pretty much been at war, although most of its on the ed2k side, and i think the eDonkey devs have been trying to break compatibility with eMule, favour their own clients, etc. this fails because eMule has over ~90% of the "market" and many many developers. there are also other clients which can connect to the network, including mods of eMule, but they can't do much damage as few people use them. I may have got some details wrong but i think this is roughly right.

      Someone actually involved will probably see this and explain in much more detail, i haven't really cared too much.

      Suggest you start using eMule, it's great and the developers are good honest folk who seem to be interested only in technical excellence (just read the changelog!).

    • Because in early '02 edonkey came with Cydoor and has been adware ever since.

      If emule caused problems on the network you would have noticed by now since 3/4th of the network consists of emule clients.

  • Not German (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:21PM (#10325290)
    Edonkey and the network have U.S. origins - http://www.edonkey2000.com/contact.html [edonkey2000.com]

    Although Emule, which I think is now the most popular client, has German origins.

  • MD5 hashes (Score:2, Informative)

    by Swifti ( 801896 )
    The main reason I use eDonkey2000? ed2k links. You can click on a link that has a MD5 hash of the file you want from an HTML file and it immediately places the download in your eDonkey queue without having you to search for the file yourself. It's great for finding file releases that have a lot of sources, thereby quickening your download.

  • Too bad both networks are junk (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Goosey ( 654680 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:24PM (#10325309) Homepage
    Honestly, nothing compares to an intelligent blend of binary newsgroups, IRC, and torrents (when I am getting desperate only!) And I officially predict this post as flamebait
    • A few things about newsgroups:

      1. You have to pay. While it is rather irrational compared to the time you save, many people spend more time (=money) pirating stuff than it is actually worth. It is like the people driving half-way across the country to an "opening sale" or to use their coupon.

      2. Newsgroups per se is easy enough. Binaries in newsgroups are still full of annoying details, like mis-id'd multi-parts that flood the group, and newbies don't understand to join anyway. In addition, you typically ne

  • An explanation of the 2 networks history: (Score:5, Informative)

    by Killswitch1968 ( 735908 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:26PM (#10325317)
    Currently FastTrack and eDonkey are the two top peer to peer networks. In almost every conceivable way, eDonkey is better than FastTrack. The reason FastTrack is popular at all is because it was the first decentralized network to pick up steam after the demise of Napster. They quickly rose to 4 million users, far above every other network.

    But after decentralization, no new features were added. Instead, lots and lots and lots of spyware was bundled into the Kazaa Client by Sharman Networks inc. Kazaa Lite, the popular non-spyware altnerative, was shut down by this same company. Several DMCA notices were issued to sites hosting Kazaa Lite.

    In the long run, a better client will supercede a poorer client once word of mouth gets around. And eDonkey far exceeds Kazaa with these features:
    Hashing (fingerprinting, prevents fake files)
    Swarming downloads
    ed2k link sites (fingerprint information on specific files in the form of html code)
    No spyware (for eMule)
    Lots of different clients to choose from

    In short, Sharman killed off their network by spending way too much time generating ad revenue, and not using that revenue to improve their client. There have been no important feature additions in years. This day has been long time coming.
    • Other factors of Fasttrack success at the beginning was that edonkey was really hard to use and that emule is a recent addition to it. They included most of the features that were requested by users (open source...) and especially all the usefull feature that required plug ins or automaters for edonkey.

      Another factor was the Morpheus OS that used to be on fasttrack and had a lot of users as it was easier, more powerfull and no spyware.

      Now, in the recent years, Fasttrack limited its network to Kazaa only,

  • the horde is well done (Score:5, Interesting)

    by havaloc ( 50551 ) * on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:37PM (#10325374) Homepage
    I don't know why anyone would bother with eMule anymore. The Horde is probably the best implementation of an anti leech system I've ever seen, and more importantly, it works well. You partner with other clients, and you both exchange parts you both need. Takes care of the leeching problem nicely, and gets you your download in a timely manner. Highly recommended.
  • Even though EMule may now be the most popular client, the EDonkey network was started by US company MetaMachine, which began in San Francisco in 2000 but then moved in 2002 with its founder Jed McCaleb to New York.

    Someone mentioned ED2K hashes being MD5; in fact last I checked they were a composite hash based on MD4 (!). Don't tell any of the bad guys that.

  • A main point... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by theamarand ( 794542 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:52PM (#10325462) Homepage
    ...and the main goody that you can extract from all of this is that P2P is a genie out of the bottle.

    Regardless of "who's on top" or "who's bigger than whom," the fact that there are multiple, competing and viable peer-to-peer sharing platforms, should give most open-minded people a good, winning feeling. Fair use is a great thing, and some folks resent paying for four or five different forms (records, eight-track, cassette tapes, CDs, Music DVDs, digital MP3s) of the same exact song, piece of software or movie; simply because the old medium type was retired, or because the old media reached the end of its short useful lifespan. Wouldn't it be nice to buy a song, and have the right to listen to that song...forever?

    Yet, I digress. The media companies have, for too long now, held the consumers and the actual artists responsible for the art-form in question, hostage. The artists aren't losing the vast majority of their profits on P2P...it's the large corporations that take the lion's share of the end product that ends up with losses. I say turn all media digital, and have us pay for only the individual songs, videos, or whatever piece of work you actually like, and get rid of the rest of the album filler...and associated over-head cost. I'll bet people would like that a lot...and I think that P2P integrated with a useable, small cash payment system, is going to really hurt the greedy media companies, while helping bring more of the end profit directly to the artists responsible.

  • Cross-Platform OSS edonkey Client (Score:4, Interesting)

    by zeromemory ( 742402 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @10:05PM (#10325532) Homepage
    I'm suprised no one has mentioned it already, but mldonkey [nongnu.org] is a nice cross-platform edonkey client. It runs pretty nicely on Linux (and somewhat decently on Windows) and comes with a web and telnet interface (it also supports third-party GUI clients).

    As an added benefit, mldonkey supports FastTrack, Gnutella 1 and 2, DirectConnect, SoulSeek, Bittorrent, OpenNap...you get the idea. I've been using it for a couple of years, and it's replaced every P2P client for me.

    Oh, edonkey is a great network to find PDFs of textbooks - a godsend for students.
  • ... Kazaa is dying.

  • Nice thing about eMule (Score:5, Informative)

    by jerometremblay ( 513886 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @10:19PM (#10325595) Homepage
    eDonkey is definitely not about speed. Bittorrent usually end up with much faster downloads. I consider it as my "archive" ressource. It's way easier to find old and obscure files on that than on bittorrent sites.

    One feature I particularly like about eMule is that it supports both server-based operation and decentralized Kademlia [psu.edu] (a kind of distributed hash table [linuxjournal.com]) searching. The two systems work together nicely and usually end up with more sources than one one of them.
  • but you haven't LIVED 'til you've heard the theme song to "Spongebob Schwamkopff."

  • Comparing DirectConnect, Kazaa, eDonkey (Score:5, Informative)

    by monsterhead78 ( 815842 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @01:37AM (#10326567) Homepage
    Direct Connect is constructed around "hubs". Users can establish their own hubs with or without restriction, forming mini-communities. When logging on, users select a hub or can connect directly to other individual peers. Hub owners have the ability to restrict users of their hubs depending upon amount and/or type of files the user is sharing. Those with smaller hard drives are restricted from joining a hub with a 10 gig minimum file share, for example, which will restrict this program's potential for less serious collectors. Direct Connect hub owners can also limit access depending upon connection speed - a lot of hub owners throw off modem users (hence the "elitist" reference). For users with a slow speed connection, Direct Connect is not your best file sharing option.

    Users also operate the servers on Edonkey2000 and KaZaA, although there appears to be less community-organisation and restriction surrounding their networks. With Edonkey2000, the program remains connect whenever you are online, so you may be vulnerable to hackers, as the program will not operate from behind a firewall, but there is no spyware. KaZaA on the other hand has built in spyware, which will deter many potential users.

    Edonkey2000 is a unique peer-to-peer sharer in its transfer system. Files are hash identified and transferred in "chunks". This means the donkey can identify identical files even if they have been renamed, increasing the potential of downloading the entire file. Because of the hash identification files can be uploaded before they have completed downloading - the "chunks" that have been received are immediately shared. Files propagate quickly over the donkey network, and the automatic resume feature has high success even after a reboot. One thing to remember though - check there is room on your incoming folder drive for the entire file - you can only change it by completing or cancelling all your downloads, and you don't want to miss the last few chunks of your file. Although this ingenious file sharing system means the donkey is reliable for getting entire files the downloads are very slow - you have to have a lot of patience.

    Direct Connect is a slow downloader as well. Users with a lot of files to share can get access to servers restricted to broadband users, which speeds transfers up a little, but one again you don't wouldn't want to be on a hurry. Direct Connect users a direct file transfer system and also has an auto-resume feature which completes file downloading from any user with the file. Direct Connect doesn't uniquely identify files and will not recognise variations in file names like Edonkey2000. On-the-ball users can rename their file and continue downloading from a new source if they identify it by the file size with a name variation.

    KaZaA downloads files from various sources at the same time, to speed up the transfer rate. The software downloads a file from several sources and the pieces are reassembled into a single file on the receiver's drive. Like Direct Connect and the donkey, KaZaA has a reliable resume feature if a transfer is interrupted, however like Direct Connect resumes will only recognise sources with identical file names. Users report KaZaA is one of the speedier peer-to-peer sharers, but once again, patience is in order, and broadband users will get the most from this program.

    All three programs have search features. Edonkey2000 has quick searches, and also offers an availability search, although the value of this is questionable. Direct Connect users can search particular hubs for material and although some users report it is time consuming going from hub to hub, the program does have an option to search the entire network. Direct Connect's sloppy interface has made this feature hard to find for some users. KaZaA has various search options and users report it is quick and reliable. Download times are shown with search results. KaZaA will also allow you to search for files not only by name, but by any keyword found in the stored description of the file. When files

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