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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

#81

Post by dark-star »

The problem with Gnutella was that it was always slower than the direct competitor, EDonkey (aka EMule, aka ed2k, aka Kademlie later, etc.)

Searching took ages (if you got any results back at all), and when you tried to download something it took ages to even start, dripping through your dial-up internet like molasses. EDonkey on the other hand was quick. The first search results usually arrived within seconds (granted, it took equally long to get all search results), and usually downloads started (slowly) after a few seconds to 1 or 2 minutes.

I don't know if this was because of popularity (more peers in ed2k so faster download speeds) or if it was a particular problem with dial-up internet (Gnutella worked better for people with fast internet, like at universities etc., at least from what I heard back then)

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

#82

Post by zirak »

kazinator wrote: post #63
d3Xt3r wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's got nothing to do with YouTube - people just don't download music any more, period. At least not like they used to, back in the late 90s and 00s. Instead, most people these days stream music from the myriad of streaming services, and yes even YouTube - it's a convenience thing. Of course, there are exceptions like audiophiles, indie/niche music, or general offline usage (flights, roaming etc); but the vast major…

I have not downloaded in a long time because ... well ... I downloaded all the good music years ago and they mostly stopped making it. :)

ok I'll bite - what do you consider good music?

Music is a big part of my life and I've found great joy in discovering new music. To give it a start, here are some suggestions from across genres of good music written after 2010:

    - Classical:
      - David Bruce - Gumboots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRIDt_4Xloc
      - Anna Clyne - Masquerade: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEOchchAuWk
    - Jazz (one of my personal favourites, and too many subgenres to count):
      - Ai Kuwabara - Bet Up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgyCpJ9FxCU
      - Brad Mehldau - Everything in Its Right Place: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omF16-qbmeM
      - Kamasi Washington - The Magnificent 7: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCnP5Z7Vn1E
    - Prog, metal, & friends:
      - Porcupine Tree - Dignity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3UhjiXG5m0
      - Haken - Falling Back to Earth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adHGrSP43QE
      - Tigran Hamasyan - Drip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7j7bdEPSd0
      - The Ocean - Into the Uncanny: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrpf51-WfH8
      - The Dear Hunter - Magic Beans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8i19Lsw34M
    - Funk
      - Vulfpeck - Back Pocket: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG96RttfZtM
    - Pop rock
      - Hannah Gil - Austin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr64XFAMANY
      - Melt - Sour Candy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z133wUm-WZ0
      - Follies & Vices - Red Wine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdaU_NkUWBI
      - Sammy Rae & The Friends - Good Life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vCdmd99Cx8
    - Punk & punk rock:
      - Father of Peace - Enemy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcfO9ENSYAQ
      - Turnstile - BIRDS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_qhk_sqr5w
      - Local H - TURN THE BOW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBtXJbgNCkA
...and uncountable others. What's your groove? I'm sure it can still be found out there!

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

#83

Post by chickensong »

kazinator wrote: post #63
d3Xt3r wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's got nothing to do with YouTube - people just don't download music any more, period. At least not like they used to, back in the late 90s and 00s. Instead, most people these days stream music from the myriad of streaming services, and yes even YouTube - it's a convenience thing. Of course, there are exceptions like audiophiles, indie/niche music, or general offline usage (flights, roaming etc); but the vast major…

I have not downloaded in a long time because ... well ... I downloaded all the good music years ago and they mostly stopped making it. :)

Say what? It's hard to hear you from way up there on your high horse, but it sounded like you said you were diagnosed with plebeian taste freeze? Aah that's too bad. My condolences.

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

#84

Post by tardedmeme »

netsharc wrote: post #80
NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it really doesn't hiding information from user is not good by any means

But relying on them to tell the OS what type a file is, or allowing them to change the extension, isn't good either. lena.jpg doesn't become lena.pdf by changing the last 3 letters of the filename..

It gets really complicated when you get into overlapping file types, like with ISOBMFF. An .mp4 can also, simultaneously, be a valid .3gp because those are profiles of ISOBMFF. On the other extreme, JPEG is secretly two different incompatible formats (JFIF and Exif), and a video file with a different codec in the same container, or even a different track layout, might as well be a different format.

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

#85

Post by NooneAtAll3 »

netsharc wrote: post #80
NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it really doesn't hiding information from user is not good by any means

But relying on them to tell the OS what type a file is, or allowing them to change the extension, isn't good either. lena.jpg doesn't become lena.pdf by changing the last 3 letters of the filename..

> allowing them to change the extension, isn't good either

why not?

power to the people. At worst it just breaks. At best you get filetype chamelions that are straight up cool, yet harmless

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

#86

Post by gbildson »

ryanshrott wrote: post #5

Gnutellas real legacy is not the file sharing, it is the lessons it taught about protocol design. Flood-based query routing is awful at scale, but it is dead simple to implement, with no central server, no SPOF, and it works behind NAT. The structured overlay networks that came after, like Chord, Pastry, and Kademlia, fixed the routing efficiency problem, but they also added enough complexity to make them harder to d…

We solved all that and used DHTs and download meshes, etc ...

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

#87

Post by gbildson »

GuB-42 wrote: post #67
gbildson wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gnutella's original sin was that it combined distributed search with distributed download. In a rational world, that would be smart and good but in a litigious world, that was too sophisticated for the Supreme Court and they ruled it as infringing on copyright through inducement of the user. Gnutella clients, like other P2P clients with search, got sued out of existence. Bittorrent offloaded the distributed search on…

I don't think it has much to do with legality. For me the biggest problem is authenticity. On most of the decentralized P2P networks of that time is that you never know what you are getting. Look for some Disney movie, get porn. Very common back in the days. Of course you also had all the malware, scams, etc... More generally, it didn't do much to incentive good behavior (sharing). Bittorrent, with its private tracke…

LimeWire was huge .. 100s of millions of downloads in those days. It only went away because it was sued out of existence. Plus, by the end, it supported torrents as well.

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

#88

Post by gbildson »

outside1234 wrote: post #17
chuckadams wrote: post #13

Hot take: the simple reason Gnutella declined is that it was replaced by Bittorrent.

I don’t think that’s a hot take, BitTorrent learned from Gnutella and made a better protocol. Gnutella is important historically, but it had a lot of downsides as a protocol that BitTorrent improved on.

Gnutella developers created huge innovations and would have continued to do so if not sued out of existence. We solved scalability and had good download mesh + DHT solutions for sourcing. I'm sure we would have been at least as good as torrents (which we supported) if we had continued.

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

#90

Post by VagabundoP »

GuB-42 wrote: post #67
gbildson wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gnutella's original sin was that it combined distributed search with distributed download. In a rational world, that would be smart and good but in a litigious world, that was too sophisticated for the Supreme Court and they ruled it as infringing on copyright through inducement of the user. Gnutella clients, like other P2P clients with search, got sued out of existence. Bittorrent offloaded the distributed search on…

I don't think it has much to do with legality. For me the biggest problem is authenticity. On most of the decentralized P2P networks of that time is that you never know what you are getting. Look for some Disney movie, get porn. Very common back in the days. Of course you also had all the malware, scams, etc... More generally, it didn't do much to incentive good behavior (sharing). Bittorrent, with its private tracke…

edonkey:

Fear and loathing in Las Vagas (took a week to download) = Granny porn. Sigh

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