IP: Gnutella

[David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> X-Sender: cbrownst () newcnri cnri reston va us
> Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2000 09:50:53 -0400
> To: farber () cis upenn edu
> From: Charles Brownstein <cbrownst () cnri reston va us>
> Subject: Gnutella
>
> Dave,
> This ought to be of interest.
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------
> Gnutella Addicts Millions
>
> If you are familiar with the MP3 sharing tool Napster and its Mac 
> equivalent, Macster, then you probably want to get your hands on 
> Gnutella, a cool little Java application that will suck up 
> tremendous amounts of time before you know it.
>
> Gnutella is similar to Napster, but instead of just MP3 files, the 
> program allows you to share anything on your hard drive. In limited 
> testing, Go2Mac.com Testing Labs have found that it works fine on a 
> Pismo/500 running Mac OS 9.0.4 and a desktop G3/266 with Mac OS 8.6; 
> however the Mac client is noticeably less robust than the non-Java 
> version of the original source code (actually the improved 0.56 
> version) running on our Windows PCs in our Narberth testing facility.
>
> We turned to Gnutella because Napster and the Mac equivalents of 
> Rapster or Macster are firewalled out of many facilities and hey, we 
> just like the freedom of searching for anything we want! [Editor's 
> note: the 'Search Monitor' feature is worth the price of admission 
> alone, while a tad scary, it is an excellent barometer of the 
> Internet at large.
>
> In addition to searching for MP3 and movies available on the 
> peer-to-peer server Gnutella network, Gnutella has proved to be an 
> easy way to set up a crude but effective (and free) file sharing 
> network between our PCs and our Macs. To get the lowdown on how to 
> get this working on your Mac, check out the Gnutella for Macintosh 
> Web site. This site compiles most of the useful sites and info for 
> Mac installation of Gnutella.
>
> FURI is a Gnutella protocol-compatible, distributed file sharing 
> system by William Wong. It was Wong who ported the Nullsoft effort 
> to Java effectively making Gnutella available on many platforms 
> including the Macintosh.
>
> You can also check out the official Gnutella site for more info on 
> new version development. Some of the info is redundant on these 
> sites, but we found it useful to examine all in setting up our Macs 
> to run the Java version. Most times when we log on, there is an 
> incredible 1 - 1.5 terrabytes [!] of files available for sharing. 
> Given that it is a peer-to-peer network and one can port hop, it 
> doesn't seem like Gnutella will be as easy to block as Napster or 
> other file sharing entities that depend on traffic traveling thru a 
> specific Web site or port.
>
> There. You just found something to do this weekend. Broadband users: 
> please do not disappear into seclusion.