File Naming Convention
 

Hi guys.
This is a problem I'd like to address concerning file sharing on all of gnutella. I actually started this on the XoloX forum at zeropaid.com, but thought I'd take it here as well in order to give it more publicity.

The problem in question is when you try to download a very big file, I'm especially thinking about movies, and you find it under different names.
For example, the other day I found 3 users sharing a certain file, then 4 users sharing the exact same one, as was proven by the size. But I couldn't download it from all 7 at the same time since the name had been modified for one group. -In this case, "DVD" had been added at the end of the movie's name. Which made XoloX think they were different files.

So I thought of suggesting some form of protocole in file naming, for the purpose of sharing.

What I suggest for the moment, for all of you who happen to see this and think it's a valuable idea, is to keep it simple.
-Since this problem concerns big files, especially movies, I propose to simply name them following their release titles, with no add-ons whatsoever.

For example :
The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring
Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone
Beauty And The Beast

In order to determine what the original title is, just consult a box office or a local cinema's website. (This is what I did for these examples, using cut and paste.)

The only obvious exception to the "no add-on" rule will have to be when the movie comes as separate files. In this case, I suggest adding "CD1", CD2", and so on.
And since that seems rather standard, I would say it should take this form :
The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring - CD1
The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring - CD2

i.e. space/bar/space (instead of underscores, although I can't say if the gnutella prgrs make the difference between underscores and bars...).

And for the rest, once again if you see this and think it's a good idea, please try and spread the word by all means available to you.
(And if you have a good reason to think it's a worthless idea, please tell me why so I stop trying to figure out a solution.)

Finally, if you have suggestion concerning other types of large files (programs for example), I'd like to hear them.

Thanx to all

It really was a problem
 

Ya, this was a big problem. It is a good thing that the good clients are using files hashes now. :) Hope the rest can catch up soon.

So I take it that it WAS a problem...

-Does this mean that with some clients other than XoloX I will not encounter it?
If so, which ones? (I only have experience with XoloX, the original Gnutella and with Bearshare.)

And finally, what are hashes?

Thanx again.

Yes
Yes


I don't know all the tech. stuff, but files hashes group the same files together so your program knows that they are all the same. So even though the name might be a little different your gnutella program still thinks they are the same file and can download from either one. And even better is when you have swamming and can download from all the copies of the same file at the same time. :)

XoloX developement has been discontinued, so you are not going to be getting any of the new features if you keep using it.

BearShare and LimeWire have the lastest features, and PEERanha, Swapper, etc. are working hard to get them too.

Just don't use the clients in the "Discontinued Gnutella Client Forums" part of this forum if you want the lastest features.

file hashes...
 

file hashes are checksums that indentify a file. If renaming the file has no influence to this checksum.

I seems, the cliens, e.g. BearShare use an algorythm called SHA1. I only know CRC.

does anybody know where to find examples how to calculate such an sha1-URN?

CU

Well, thanx for the useful info.
I shall therefore stop bothering everybody with this (I'd gotten encouragement from some users at zeropaid.com, which made me think this was a general gnutella problem... Oh well !)

-As for Xolox being discontinued, I was aware of that. Only, after having tried 2 other clients, including BearShare, I'll find the user-friendliness of XoloX very hard to part with... (Oh well !, again.)

Anyway, thanx again.