To Download Gnutella or not to Download? That is the Question.
 

Hi,
I've been tinkering with Gnute and Audiofind for a couple months. I never actually downloaded Gnutella. All I've ever done was go to the site, searched for what I wanted, right clicked, chose save file as, and hoped for the best. Sometimes I get a song, sometimes I don't. Will I have a better chance at finding an available server if I use the actual downloaded version of Gnute? Or is there no real difference?
Also, are certain tunes only available in search when the contributor is connected? If so, why do they show up in the search catalogue, but the server comes up unavailable when I try to download the song?
Thanks for your time and help.
The11

No, you won't have a better chance of finding anything if you download a client, but you'll be helping others by sharing your files. One of the main reasons it's so difficult to find files these days is that people are using web-based clients to leech off the Gnutella Network without sharing anything in return.

[This message has been edited by CycloCide (edited 11-27-2000).]

yes it is good to share your files on gnutella as well.. remember it will suck if no one shares..

also bearshare are going to implement something to stop people from downloading from gnutella via the web so, get a gnutella client, get bearshare.. you'll like it.

i loaded bearshare and guess what i noticed about a minutes worth of time on gnutella and 90 % or more of the requests were from the web.. i got a request about every 3 seconds from the web.. i think those web based sites that allow you to mooch of gnutella is what has been destroying it.

The "problem" with Gnutella is not the fact that people are downloading using their web browsers.

I see no reason why Gnutella can't scale up so that everyone may download files, whether they are sharing or not, without creating a burden on the rest of us.

FreePeers believes the "problem" is not moochers, leeches, or freeloaders, but rather, the primitive state of the client software that is out there right now.

So you don't think there are any problems with the current protocol?

How are the clients out there right now primitive?

Even BearShare is primitive.

I mean, look at how much bandwidth is devoured by a few measly host connections.

The idea of 'broadcasting' a search to 16,000 computers on average, and having all the results pile back at you is very inefficient.

Most of the time, the same files end up being returned to different clients over and over again.

Clearly, the protocol, or at least client's implementations of it, is in its infancy.

A glance at the statistics page in BearShare used to show over 50% of traffic was pings and pongs. This is ridiculous!!!