Software-Clients für File-Sharing
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The internet means the end of the printed book within the next 10 years! Well, that is what the internet-gurus said around five years ago. Unfortunately, it seems to have affected the music music and record inductry very much earlier. |
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File Sharing
Is there a musician who does not fantasise about having the entire world listen to his music ? What joy and serenity this could bring to the world and to each of us in our everyday lives! As the music industry shows us, apparently not a single one.
However, the motto of the music industry rather different. It is make money at all costs Because of this, we have seen once popular programs like Napster are turned into money making ventures that are a pale shadow of their former selves. Every new swap portal and peer to peer file sharing network is fought by the gnomes of the RIAA in the courts. Music files and CDs have copy protection systems imposed on them that can even trash your hardware. (see Telepolis: Kopierschutz um jeden Preis? (only German)).
But the armament mania has always a positive effect, it always takes place on both sides.
While one side always work on encrypting technologies, the opponents develop more intelligent,
de-localised, stable peer-to-peer (P2P) networks.
To connect thousands of users equeally likely and ensure trouble-free communication between
every user and nearly all other clients would have been declared as nearly impossible some years ago.
Anyway, a network with a central server still offers the fastest resposnes to search inquiries.
The switch-offs of the napster server carried out some time ago nearly in daily rythm on the basis of
judicial ruling and then "temporary injuctions" some hours later even came in the (German) local news
and even the
Tagesschau
(most famous and reputable news show in German television) mentioned Napster several times.
. Only this wide media interest made Napster known to the population and caused the never-been-before
boom which overloaded the Napster server several times.
It also showed the big weakness of this network, which dependent fully on the servers in America.
Every switch-off brang the network to a standstill. This is why the next generation of exhcange
networks have more than one central server park, but it also puts a free useable sever apart
from a client at the networks disposal. The individual servers usually run on private PCs and usually
not longer than one day before they change their IP.
On the opposite the clients "jump" from server to server and search meanwhile the wanted files.
Every client leaves a list of known servers by him on the visited servers, so that clients which visit
later will find this list and expand their own address list.
KaaZaA, Morpheus and Grokster are the last remained representatives of the old Napster-
philosophy and got already caught in the claws of the RIAA.
This network uses also a peer-2-peer technology with nodes (clients) and supernodes
(clients refunctioned as server), but the strict secrecy of the protocoll prevents the development of
free clients (see giFT) so that all clients can be equipped with a filter under
pressue of the RIAA.
Precautions for steps like that are already integrated in all distributed clients.
In the following text mainly the the alternatives to those under widnows distributed clients are shown, if there'sa linux client. A separate article shows the installation and use of the affiliated servers.
OpenNap
The Napster protocoll was quick improved and a compatible server was developed by resourceful programmers.
The whole project has the name
OpenNap and is in the meantime more popular than the
classical napster server.
for this protocol exist a lot of clients which have all their own advantages.
Very popular is
Lopster, a GTK-program which stands out due to high stability
and a big functional extent.
For every single user who wants to up- or download files, the ammount of simultaneous transfers can be
adjusted. Realtime statistics and automised search inquiries round the succeeded program off. This comfort,
though uses much time and calculation power, so that the program uses most of the available calculation
power on a pentium I or lower.
It is recommendet to use the actual CVS-version instead of the precompiled tar.gz package,
because it is newer.
KDE user might prefer KNapster, while for Gnome users
Gnapster also is recommendet.
Many console-users use instead TekNap, which offers many options,
but requires also a long user learn-periode.
Links:
| OpenNap | opennap.sourceforge.net |
| Lopster | lopster.sourceforge.net |
| Knapster | knapster.sourceforge.net |
| Gnapster | www.faradic.net/~jasta/gnapster.html |
| TekNap | www.teknap.com |
eDonkey2000
The eDonkey-network is mainly used for exhcanging movies.
It is ideal for divied big files, because it offers functions like simultanous download
of a single file and downloading from clients which just have a part of the requested file.
In addition new files can be distributed in the network very fast without that the burden is done by
single clients.
The linux client for this network is only as console version available, which won't change for a while.
But there are graphical frontends available, which are developed independent from the client.
The usage of the console version offers in conjuction with the Unix-Tool"screen",
which should be installed on most default systems, an unbelieveable flexibility.
Screen is a kind of WindowManager for the console, that allows to start shell sessions and run those
in the background and -if neccessary- continue on left position.
If You start via screen a new session and in this session the eDonkey-client,
it is possible to put the screen session via buttons "CTRL A" and "CTRL D" in the background and
any time with "screen -r" (if neccessary with the PID number) in the foreground.
That way the client runs unsupervised and search the eDonkey-servers for many days.
The usage of the console client may be unusual in the beginning, but after the habitation
phase quite acceptable.
More problematic is more likely finding an eDonkey-server in the net. There is a list of known servers on
the eDonkey homepage, but that list is out-of-date.
If there is a connection to a server, a list will be automaticly tranfered (to see it, type "vm").
From now on the discovery of new servers shoudln't be a problem, and you can via
"auto +" start the automaticly connection with other servers.
You can get help to all the console commands by typing "?".
Links:
| eDonkey2000 | www.edonkey2000.com |
| Screen | www.math.fu-berlin.de/~guckes/screen/ |
Gnutella
The Gnutella network is a pure P2P-network, without any server and that's why it isn't controllable.
Every PC is a so named
node in the Gnutella network. Search inquiries are transported from inode to indoe and in the case of hits
the response is sent back to the inquiry PC. The dollowing file transfers are between the two PCs.
the Gnutella - network was for a while very overloaded and had (like many other networks, too)
to fight with the fact that most users only download, but weren't interested in sharing their files.
Therefore, the networkload for single users went intolerable high, so that rational tranfer rates
couldn't be reached any more.
Durch die hohe Popularität anderer Netzwerke und ein Redesign des Gnutella-Protokolls hat sich
dieses Problem mittlerweile gebessert. Zwar gelingt ein Tausch größerer Dateien mittels Gnutella
immer noch recht selten, kleine MP3-Dateien können hingegen zumeist erfolgreich
übertragen werden.
In the meantime this changed because of the popularity of other networks and the redesign
of the Gnutella protocoll. The exchange of big files still doesn't succeed often, but small MP3 files
mostly can be transfered successfully.
A good linux client is GTK-Gnutella, which is built
similar to its windows pendant.
The Java client Lime Wire, is also wide circulated, which ensures a
comfortable navigation in the Gnutella network.
But there are much more client programs for linux, which can't be mentioned all here. A good overview gives the page: http://www.gnutelliums.com/linux_unix/.
Links:
| GTK-Gnutella | gtk-gnutella.sourceforge.net/ |
| Lime Wire | www.limewire.com/ |
| Client-Übersicht | http://www.gnutelliums.com/linux_unix/ |
Audiogalaxy
Audiogalaxy is an exchange network built totally different,
which stands out because of its webbased usage. the network is built on a central server,
where every registered user can search the wanted files or offer files for downloads with his webbrowser.
Meanwhile (or to every other time) you start a program part known as a satellite which offers a
connection between your own PC and the server.
If a user somewhere on the world wants to connect with one of the searched file on the Audiogalaxy server,
the server recognises this and produces a connection between both satellites.
This principle offers quite a few advantages: It is possible to get very rare files that way,
because the servers saves all file names that a user typed in somewhen, though the person isn't
loogged in any more.
You let run Your own satellite and wait until the person (which has the files) loggs in again to
the Audiogalaxy network.
In addaition it is possible to run the satellite on any PC, while You mark a song for download on any webbrowser, which just came to Your mind. It is not neccessary to start the satellite.
Though, not all titles are swapable via Audiogalaxy, because the server has activated extensive filters which forbid the swapping of definite files. After what rules are working, stays a server administrators' sercret, who didn't react to emails regarding this.
That's why a bunch inquiries of authors are still unanswered, which asked to add their songs to the filters. On the other side, there are some cases, in which free song authors don't want that their songs are locked (see also Audiogalaxy-Forum).
Because only the satellite has to contact to the server while the search inquiries run on a web frontend,
the client is pure console-based
The configuration is very untypical, after the download of the software from the
Audiogalaxy site, the program has to be decompressed and two
files have to be made account.txt and shares.txt and put into the folder.
The first file's first line has to be filled with the Audiogalaxy accounts email address and the second
with the belonging password.
The file shares.txt has to be filled with the folder name, in which the files are put after
the download. This folder is also opened for uploads.
While the connection, a log-file is produced "logv***.txt, which helps in the case of trouble.
Links:
| Audiogalaxy | www.audiogalaxy.com |
Generic Interface to FastTrack: giFT
The programs Morpheus and KaZaA, which are so popular under Windows are based on the FastTrack network.
Linux versions of those programs aren't available from the official side.
(in the meantime an Kazaa-Client for Linux exists).
That's why a group of programmer decrypted the communication via reverse enginieering and offers
an Open Source client.
It is called giFT and means
Generic Interface to FastTrack.
The windows clients Morpheus and KaZaA are financed with advertising (banners) in their software,
while the giFT-project uses their resources, but doesn't "collect" money.
That's why morpheus and KaZaA tried several times to prevent the connection of the Open Source variante
to the FastTrack network with protocoll changes (that were called security updates).
Well, they didn't succeed for a long time.
The software is based on two parts, one which connects to the FastTrack network,
while the built-on client transports the search inquieries to the network.
Up to now there is a CGI-client, which is operated by a webinterface and a java-applet.
the clients are not very user-friendly, besides it is questionable if the time and the work that the
open-source-developers sacrify is worth the thing.
Because already now the the FastTrack network is a thorn in RIAAs flesh, and it won't dure long until
the first filters are installed for this network.
Links:
| giFT | http://sourceforge.net/projects/gift |
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