eDonkey (a napster look-a-like)

The following article is written by Alfred (THANK YOU!):

I wanted to make myself useful on the Internet and when I read the article from MP|3 (which you can read here) I also wanted to make something. Then I saw the following reaction from Mercular:

Reaction by Mercular on Monday 26 February 2001 How about a review of eDonkey2000 as well?

The Start

And why not I thought and I start searching on http://www.edonkey2000.net:

It allows you to transfer any type of file. It automatically resumes interrupted transfers from alternate sources. It even introduces ways to share a whole collection of files together so you can be sure to get all the songs in an album or all pieces of a movie. Users will be able to download a file from multiple sources at the same time thus insuring that transfers will be as fast as possible.

It also said:

No central server. Servers can be located anywhere at any IP address.

This means it works the same way as KaZaA. So they don’t have any problems with the record companies (yet) as Napster now has.

How does it work?

The program works almost the same way as Napster and KaZaA. A button with ’search’ with which you search for ‘any’ type of file.



At Downloads you can look how it goes. For example you can see how much you have to download, how many k/sec is sending, how long it takes, and from wich user you download. But this can also be several users at a time!



At this picture you see all kinds of coloured pieces. The colors mean this:

Black: The parts you have already downloaded
Red: Parts that can’t be found on the donkey network.
Gray: Parts that you are currently asking for.
Shades of Blue: The more blue the more common that part of the file.

Of course it’s a good idea that several pieces of one movie are being downloaded but it sucks if nobody has the middle pieces of the movie. Sometimes I even wonder if I ever get a FULL movie like this, because of the many pieces.

At options I noticed the following:



You can choose for yourself how many k/sec you upload and how many k/sec you download. The total k/sec you can see at the bottom of your screen:



Conclusion

This could be a nice alternative for Napster. Some advantages:

⋅ No central server. Servers can be located anywhere at any IP address..
⋅ Download a file from several different users at once.
⋅ Simultaneous uploading and downloading of the same file.
⋅ Decide for yourself how many k/sec you up and download.

Disadvantages for me are:

⋅ It doesn’t work fast
⋅ With big files it could be a problem if you download from several sources, and don’t get a full file.
⋅ It could all be more colourful.
⋅ Need more users connected.


Download

If you want to try the program click here. It’s not very difficult to install it. You can choose some options like this:


Pretty standard. Give it a try!

Let us know what u think of eDonkey… react below!