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Before we start, we need to
get some things clear. For one, Gnutella doesn't use servers to connect to
like Napster or CuteMX. You connect to one person on the network, by
entering their IP in the IP text box and that connects you directly to
that one person on the network. When you search, though, it will do a recursive
search throughout the network starting with that one person you
are connected to.
As you can see the box that
says, "You" connects to another box or computer. "You"
is directly connected to that box and indirectly connected to all of the
other boxes. When a search is done, "You" send the search to the
box it is directly connected to, and that box sends the search to all the
boxes it is connected and so on and so forth.
For Techies
Gnutella is a peer-to-peer network. Each person on the network is
considered a hub.
In other terms, everybody on the network is a client and a server
If you need more help, or if
you need more IPs to connect to... please visit us on IRC using the DALnet
Server and go to #gnutella.
| Where
Can I Find A Good Server To Connect to? |
| Gnutella's peer-to-peer model uses no servers.
Each person is an individual node in a network of computers. If you need a
server please log on to IRC (DALnet), go to #gnutella and /DNS somebody. Please do not ask the entire
channel for somebody that has a IP for gnutella. Almost everybody in #gnutella
has gnutella open. The default port is 6346. Keep trying until you get one.
Also, try downloading the gnutella.net file from the Download Section and putting it
in your gnutella directory, overwriting the existing one. |
|
| What's the difference between incoming and
outgoing connections? |
| The fact that people ask this one mystifies me.
The answer is very simple. One is incoming connections, the other is outgoing
connections. For those of you still unclear on this concept, an incoming
connection is where someone is connected to you. And outgoing one is where
you're connected to someone else. Does matter what direction it is, data is
passed both ways. |
|
| Will The Source Code Be Released, and if so,
when? |
| If all goes well and development of Gnutella
continues you should see the source code during the 1.0 release. The source code
has not been released yet and we are unsure at this time if it will ever be
released, due to AOL locking it in a closet underneath a large pile of Time
Warner's dirty laundry. |
|
| What does the "Speed" number mean? |
| Oddly enough, this is asked numerous times a
day on IRC. The speed setting reflects, oddly enough, the speed of the line on
the remote end that returned the search. This is not automatically determined,
and is set in the configuration on the client, and as such is rarely accurate. |
|
| Where Are Settings Saved? |
| Settings are saved when you shut down Gnutella
and are saved in the GNUTELLA.INI & GNUTELLA.NET files in your Gnutella
directory. |
|
| What Is Gnutella Written With? |
| Microsoft Visual Studio |
|
| Is it available for Linux? |
| There are third-party Linux clients already
available! Some of the Beta versions of Gnutella for Windows are reported to
work with WINE. |
|
| Is it available for Mac? |
| There is a Java version that is reported to
work nicely under MacOS. |
|
| Do the file tranfers go through the
GnutellaNet? |
| No. The GnutellaNet is used only for exchanging
servant messages and performing searches. The actual transfer is done directly
between servants via HTTP. |
|
| How did you get the protocol specs? |
|
Some smart people analyzed the traffic, and
reverse engineered most of it. Other parts were obtained from a conversation on
IRC.
I thought AOL pulled the plug at 0.48, so
what's with these new versions? Who is producing them? Are they official? Are
more coming?
In the interest of protecting those involved,
it can only be said that these versions are being produced by someone with
access to the source code. No, of course they're not official in the gnullsoft
sense, but they do come from a trusted source. I would certainly expect more
versions, since we've already seen several materialize.
|
|
| What are those three comma-separated numbers
in the info field after each connection? (S,R,D) |
| Those (at present) represent the number of
GnutellaNet messages sent, received, and dropped, to that host. |
|
| How do I know what IP I'm downloading from? |
| There is a column in the downloads window
immediately to the right of the "Status" column. It is set to zero
width by default, but it can be stretched. |
|
| Why Does A Search For *.mp3 Not Work
Correctly? |
| The * is ignored. if you really, really want to
search for all mp3's out there (we think you're nuts if you do, however), search
for ".mp3". Or whatever extension your little heart desires. |
|
| Is this program designed for exchanging
copyrighted files? |
| Gnutella is a tool for general peer-to-peer
file-sharing. It can be used to share spreadsheets, source code, design
documents, really any file on your computer. Yes, it is possible to exchange
illegal files. This is entirely the choice of the people sharing them. That is,
after all, the beauty of freedom of choice. We do not condone or endorse the
exchange and transfer of such files, and would like to point out that doing so
is entirely at your own risk. |
|
| I'd like to run a Gnutella server. Who do I
ask? |
| There are no servers. This is a decentralized
system that does not rely on central servers that can be shut down on a whim. If
you want to be part of the network, download the Gnutella application, and fire
away. |
|
| I'm behind a firewall. Can I still use
Gnutella? |
| Certainly. If you're exchanging files with
people outside your firewall, the other end of the transaction can't be
firewalled. But you can also set up your own gnutellanet within your firewall,
simply by having others connect to each other. |
|
| How come when I try to download songs from
Gnutella nothing happens? |
| Nothing happens probably due to that fact that
the person who is hosting the files has recently renamed the files they are
sharing and has forgotten to Rescan the folders in which they are sharing the
files. |
|
| I'm a parent concerned about pornography. Is
this a haven for perverts? |
| Given that gnutella is designed to share any
type of files, it's quite likely that there are people sharing adult material.
There is really nothing that can be done to stop this. However, the proportion
of searches for adult material on gnutella is not significantly different from
what you will find on the web at large. |
|
| Doesn't gnutella expose me to virus attacks? |
| No more so than downloading files from the
internet through any other means such as FTP, the Web, IRC, or Usenet. Use
common sense and scan executable file using a current virus scanner with a
recent list. |
|
| What are dropped packets? |
| A packet is "dropped" when the client
at the other end of the connection is unable to keep up with the rate at which
the data wants to flow. It's trying to drink from a fire hose, to put a cliché on
it. If you find that a particular client connection has a lot of dropped packets
and that number doesn't stop growing, then you should close that client's
connection. Why? Because he's wasting your time. He's not receiving much of the
data he is supposed to, so he really doesn't belong connected to you.
Aggressively closing connections to clients which are dropping an unreasonable
number of packets benefits the performance of the network at large. To reduce
the number of dropped packets that you receive check all the hosts you are
connected to for dropped packets. In the column "S,R,D" D stands for dropped packets. So remove any one of your hosts with too many dropped packets. |
|
| Is file resuming supported? |
| Yes, file resuming is supported. |
|
| Does Gnutella automatically resume
interrupted downloads? |
| Whenever you close Gnutella and you have a file
that was still downloading, it will resume where it left off upon restarting
Gnutella. This doesn't always work, as the system you were downloading from may
no longer be on the network. |
|
| Does a search normally take a long time? |
| The amount of time it takes for a search to
complete depends on your speed and the speed of the others you are connected to.
It takes time to traverse the gnutellanet made up of many high and low speed
connections. Well.. how much time you might ask. I would at least give the
search 1-2 minutes. If nothing else then you don't have any hosts (click the
update button to update the hosts it DOES NOT manually update) are not connected
to anybody or you searched for something that just nobody had. Some file
extensions nobody is sharing or they aren't configured to say. For example,
gnutella doesn't default to share *.iso files, therefore you might not find any
iso files unless a certain user has specified that they want to share *.iso
files. |
|
| Since my IP address isn't sent along with my
search, how does other people's Gnutella clients find out where to send the
search results? |
| Gnutella keeps track of all the IP addresses on
the network along with each client's TTL and hops. Gnutella then matches up the
TTL and hops from the search with the ones it has from all of its pings and
sends it to the IP address it found. |
|
| Is there anyway to stop or cancel a search? |
| Since there is no point that can define the
"end" of a search, it will keep getting results until you start
another. |
|
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MP3
Short for MPEG Layer 3, a type of audio data compression that can reduce digital sound files by a 12:1 ratio with virtually no loss in quality.
NETWORK
A group of two or more computer systems linked together.
SERVER
A computer or device on a network that manages network resources.
CLIENT
Typically, a client is an application that runs on a personal computer or workstation and relies on a server to perform some operations.
CLONE
A computer, software product, or device that functions exactly like another, better-known product.
PLATFORM
The underlying hardware or software for a system.
IP
Abbreviation of Internet Protocol, pronounced as two separate letters. IP specifies the format of packets, also called datagrams, and the addressing scheme.
HOST
A computer system that is accessed by a user working at a remote location.
PEER-TO-PEER
A type of network in which each workstation has equivalent capabilities and responsibilities. This differs from client/server architectures, in which some computers are dedicated to serving the others.
NODE
In networks, a processing location. A node can be a computer or some other device, such as a printer.
IRC
Short for Internet Relay Chat, a chat system developed by Jarkko Oikarinen in Finland in the late 1980s. IRC has become very popular as more people get connected to the Internet because it enables people connected anywhere on the Internet to join in live discussions. Unlike older chat systems, IRC is not limited to just two participants.
PORT
An endpoint to a logical connection. The port number identifies what type of port it is. For example, port 80 is used for HTTP traffic.
SOURCE
CODE
Initially, a programmer writes a program in a particular programming language. This form of the program is called the source program, or more generically, source code.
JAVA
A high-level programming language developed by Sun Microsystems.
Java is a general purpose programming language with a number of features that make the language well suited for use on the World Wide Web.
MAC
OS
The official name of the Macintosh operating system.
LINUX
Pronounced lee-nucks, A freely-distributable implementation of UNIX that runs on a number of hardware platforms, including Intel and Motorola microprocessors. It was developed mainly by Linus Torvalds. Because it's free, and because it runs on many platforms, including PCs, Macintoshes and Amigas, Linux has become extremely popular over the last couple years.
HTTP
Short for HyperText Transfer Protocol, the underlying protocol used by the World Wide Web. HTTP defines how messages are formatted and transmitted, and what actions Web servers and browsers should take in response to various commands.
TRAFFIC
The load on a communications device or system.
PACKET
A piece of a message transmitted over a packet-switching network.
One of the key features of a packet is that it contains the destination address in addition to the data. In IP networks, packets are often called datagrams.
APPLICATION
A program or group of programs designed for end users.
Applications software (also called end-user programs) includes database programs, word processors, and spreadsheets. Figuratively speaking, applications software sits on top of systems software because it is unable to run without the operating system and system utilities.
FIREWALL
A system designed to prevent unauthorized access to or from a private network. Firewalls can be implemented in both hardware and software, or a combination of both. Firewalls are frequently used to prevent unauthorized Internet users from accessing private networks connected to the Internet, especially intranets. All messages entering or leaving the intranet pass through the firewall, which examines each message and blocks those that do not meet the specified security criteria.
TRANSACTION
A type of computer processing in which the computer responds immediately to user requests. Each request is considered to be a transaction. Automatic teller machines for banks are an example of transaction processing.
FTP
Abbreviation of File Transfer Protocol, the protocol used on the Internet for sending files.
USENET
A worldwide bulletin board system that can be accessed through the Internet or through many online services. The USENET contains more than 14,000 forums, called newsgroups, that cover every imaginable interest group. It is used daily by millions of people around the
world.
EXTENSION
In DOS and some other operating systems, one or several letters at the end of a filename. Filename extensions usually follow a period (dot) and indicate the type of information stored in the file. For example, in the filename EDIT.COM, the extension is COM, which indicates that the file is a command file.
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