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Old March 7th, 2003
afisk afisk is offline
LimeWire Developer
 
Join Date: May 6th, 2001
Location: New York
Posts: 691
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Default LimeWire 2.9.0 Alpha

We have just released the LimeWire 2.9.0 alpha. We're calling it an "alpha" because it has so much new code that hasn't been tested on the wilds of the Gnutella network that we're going to extend the alpha/beta process slightly more than we normally would. That said, this version is loaded with new features, including:

- New "dynamic search" architecture will make Ultrapeers dynamically adjust their search based on how many results have been received. This frees up bandwidth by cutting off searches for popular content when enough results are received. For searches for rare content, it will send the search further on the network to ensure that you receive the results you're looking for.

- Indexing between Ultrapeers now allows Ultrapeers to only forward searches to their neighboring Ultrapeers when the neighboring Ultrapeers have matching content. This change should save about another 50% of network bandwidth over the old search architecture, leaving more bandwidth for rare content searches and for your downloads.

- MAGNET links. LimeWire now supports the MAGNET protocol. Using MAGNET, you can insert a link on a web site that will automatically wakeup LimeWire to search for and download the content specified in the link. In the future, this will mean that you will be able to click on a file in your library and select to e-mail a link to that file to a friend. When your friend clicks on the link, it will wakeup LimeWire and download the file directly. If you've ever had trouble e-mailing large files to your friends or associates, this will solve the problem!

- Local subnet searches -- LimeWire will now always search your local network for anyone sharing content with another LimeWIre. If you're in a dorm, on a corporate LAN, or on a wireless network at a conference, fire up your LimeWire to see what other people on the local network are sharing. The results will appear in special blue stars with the speed listed as "Ethernet." When you go to download these files, the speeds will be unmatched because the transer is happening locally.

- New LimeWire look -- new buttons, smaller icons, and a new feel make LimeWire sharper than ever.

- Improvements to the "download mesh" architecture will improve your download success rate and throughput.

We've added many more features and bug fixes, but there are so many that I can't quite keep track of them all! This version is also really a "beta" for LimeWire 3.0, which will include refined versions of all of these features. The search architecture changes in particular incorporate some of the latest ideas from the p2p research community, including more agressive use of indexing to decrease the average load on a given computer and the use of more connections between Ultrapeers to create a network less vulnerable to node leaves and joins, to save bandwidth on query hits by reducing the distance on the network they travel, and to reduce the latency of searches, so you get your results more quickly!

This is really the first installment of a series of radical improvements that promise to dramatically improve the searchability of the Gnutella network!

Thanks for everyone's support. We hope you like it. There are surely bugs with all the new code, so be patient with this version for a week or two -- we think it's features will soon impress you.

One last thing -- this won't be available for Mac 9.x and below until Monday -- our apologies for the delay.

-LimeWire Team