Jump to content

eDonkey network

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Haakon (talk | contribs) at 20:37, 21 June 2006 (→External links: rm links not belonging in wikipedia per WP:EL.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The eDonkey network (also called eDonkey2000 network or ed2k) is a file sharing network used primarily to exchange music, films and software. Like most file sharing networks, it is decentralized; files are not stored on a central server but are exchanged directly between users based on the peer to peer principle.

The eDonkey client programs connect to the network to share files. eDonkey servers act as communication hubs for the clients and allow users to locate files within the network. Clients and servers are available for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux and other UNIX variants. Anyone can add a server to the network. Because of constant changes to the server network, clients update their server lists regularly.

The eDonkey network uses a compound MD4 hash checksum to identify files which permits identification of identical files with different filenames as well as distinction of differing files with identical filenames. Another feature of eDonkey is that for files greater than 9,728,000 bytes (about 9.28 MB), it shares file segments before the download completes; this speeds up the distribution of large files throughout the network. To ease file searching, some websites list the checksums of sought-after files in the form of an ed2k link. Some of those websites also have lists of active servers for users to update.

In 2004, the eDonkey network overtook FastTrack to become the most widely used file sharing network on the Internet. While figures vary from hour to hour and day to day, it is thought, in mid-2005, to host on average approximately two to three million users sharing 500 million to two billion files via 100 to 200 servers. The network's most popular server was, at one time, Razorback2, which usually hosted about 1 million users. Sometime around February 21 2006 the Razorback2 servers were raided and seized by the Federal Belgian Police. The servers are no longer online.

Servers

The most widely used ed2k server software is Lugdunum.

Recently, servers have appeared on the eDonkey network that censor the shared content search and information about files by type of the file (like video or mp3) or by key words (like "xxx", "sex", etc.). These servers include "Sonny Boy" servers, "Byte Devils", "Pirate's Lair" servers and others. Some of these servers have an IP starting with "64.34" and are located in United States, but they are also in other countries. These servers report that a large number of users (up to 1.5 million) are connected to them and thus they raise the number of users in the network to up to 10-13 million; however, it is impossible to determine how many people are actually connected to them.

A problem of the network is that it needs special servers to keep working. It relies on users who are willing to give away bandwidth and computing time permanently to supply a server. Those servers suffer under a lot of heavy traffic and are—at least in theory—vulnerable for attacks on the network. To overcome this problem MetaMachine, the company developing the original eDonkey client, developed a "successor" of the eDonkey protocol called Overnet[1]. eMule has developed a Kademlia network of their own, generally called Kad, to overcome this reliance on central servers.

Clients

There are numerous clients for the eDonkey network, some of which are open source or free software:

  • eMule: an open source Windows client; the most popular client, with 80% of network users. Also runs on Linux under Wine. Ports of eMule to Unix platforms include xMule, lMule (abandoned) and aMule (which supports Linux and Mac too).
  • Shareaza: an open source multi-network client for Windows.
  • MLDonkey: a free software client that runs on many platforms and supports numerous other file-sharing protocols as well.
  • eDonkey2000 (a client of MetaMachine): currently two versions are available, one which you pay for and one which includes ads.
  • Hydranode: an open source multi-network crossplatform core-gui separated client.
  • MediaVAMP (later changed to Pruna): a Korean-only client based on eMule.
  • Lphant: a multi-network (eDonkey and BitTorrent) crossplatform core-gui separated client that runs on the Microsoft .NET or Mono platform.
  • Jubster: a multi-network client for Windows.

Privacy

It is believed that the organization behind the censored servers also run fake "Razorback" servers (like Razorback 2.3, Razorback 2.4), which have limited search and source look-up support. It has also been suggested that these servers are run by the RIAA, or other similar organisations, with the aim to collect information on users' activities.

See also

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=EDonkey_network&oldid=59875225"