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Gnutella: A Protocol Outliving the World That Created It

rickcarlino.com

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Re: Gnutella: A Protocol Outliving the World That Created It

#41

Post by ck45 »

culi wrote: post #11
itsthecourier wrote: post #2

just reading gnutella triggered a really old memory of times when Ares, Limewire and eMule where places to try your luck getting mp3s and software

Docuwiki (not to be confused with DokuWiki) is still the most thorough source I've seen for niche documentaries. https://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=Category:Name It is all ed2k links. Unfortunately modern clients for ed2k are quite lacking

ed2k, nice! That reminds me of this superb piece of software: MLDonkey (https://github.com/ygrek/mldonkey), written in OCaml.

Re: Gnutella: A Protocol Outliving the World That Created It

#42

Post by yownie »

slater wrote: post #39
yownie wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~~who?~~ holy smokes you're right!

Looks like it's this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Gorton Oh well.

I'm shocked! used to work for him ages ago.

I swear I think we're living in the episode of TNG with the brain worms every day now.

Re: Gnutella: A Protocol Outliving the World That Created It

#43

Post by abcd_f »

doublerabbit wrote: post #40
pndy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh so pretty much the "classic" share something rule; that was pain in the ass in DC++ times but quality of whatever you could find there was best

DC++ now that's some nostalgia. Myself used IRC XDCC bots connected to my 33k modem connected to my 486DX which would disconnect every three hours. eDonkey, WinMX, lovely fashionable protocols.

Not to forget the eMule.

Re: Gnutella: A Protocol Outliving the World That Created It

#44

Post by abcd_f »

The main issue with Gnutella was - IIRC - that it didn't scale. At least the initial version, not sure if there was a revised one.

Basically, if you open the log window and look at the peer messages, then beyond certain network size all you'd see was a flood of relayed search queries with duplicates that ground all other activity to the halt. And the whole thing just became unusable.

PS. Also, Gnutella was released almost to the day when some clause of the AOL's purchase contract of Nullsoft (stock option vesting?) has expired so the devs were ultimately free to do whatever the f they wanted. So released the file sharing app. That was a nice touch.

Re: Gnutella: A Protocol Outliving the World That Created It

#46

Post by Mc91 »

swax wrote: post #21

I did a client called Gnucleus back in the day, the original website is still up at https://gnucleus.org/ I also designed GWebCache with a friend in college (also the IRC caching before that was me, I'm sorry). I think in the end the cost/benefit of the Gnutella architecture wasn't there. Especially in privacy - too much of a liability exposing your machine to serve files and route traffic. Also the efficiency of sea…

I remember Gnucleus and followed the release of Gnutella and used to read the old Gnutella Developer Forum on Yahoo where the major Gnutella clones hashed out the next steps for the network.

I agree - competition from BitTorrent lowered Gnutella's popularity.

Another thing about BitTorrent - I go to the Pirate Bay right now and look at top 100 for music, and "Pink Floyd - Discography 1967-2014" is one of the top torrents - 2.86 gigs, 131 seen seeds, 10 seen partials (seeds means they have 100% of the blob). You can download all their albums if you want, or one album, or one song on one album. Also most bittorrent clients have anti-leech constraints, so someone might start out accepting and sharing any part of that blob, making the one song they want a high priority request for them - they get the song they want quicker but they're also contributing to the torrent while they're online. So this sort of thing has all kinds of benefits for the network.

Whereas Gnutella tends to be look for and get one song at a time.

Re: Gnutella: A Protocol Outliving the World That Created It

#48

Post by M95D »

abcd_f wrote: post #43
doublerabbit wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DC++ now that's some nostalgia. Myself used IRC XDCC bots connected to my 33k modem connected to my 486DX which would disconnect every three hours. eDonkey, WinMX, lovely fashionable protocols.

Not to forget the eMule.

WinMX

Re: Gnutella: A Protocol Outliving the World That Created It

#49

Post by magic_hamster »

Nice writeup. It goes deep into Gnutella, but it's also worth mentioning the slew of sharing programs back then, which was truly like the wild west. Napster, Emule, DC++, Kazaa, to name a few. On many of these networks it was possible to literally browse other people's sharing folders, find really cool stuff, and maybe make some guesses on the what this user was like.
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