EDonkey network

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The correct title of this article is eDonkey network. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.

The eDonkey network (also called eDonkey2000 network or ed2k) is a peer-to-peer 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.


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[edit] Features

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. Two such sites are FileHash.com and eMugle.

[edit] 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 "72.51" [1] 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. The main purpose of these servers is to broadcast advertisements and fake files to users that connect to them. Some of these servers also function as NetSentry and other outsourced evidence collection companys' spy bots to collect upload information in order to sue users for piracy[citation needed], though it could be easily blocked out, by the use of IP Blocker software, such as bluetack. Only about 30% of Emule users are currently using ip filtering of some kind (Emule built-in, software like ProtoWall, or at the firewall). [citation needed]

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.

The (real) server software is developed and maintained by Lugdunum , leaving the latest (but old) metamachine servers vastly obsolete. The ED2K protocol has been extended numerous times by Lugdunum since Metamachine abandoned development of ED2K server software and displayed the source code to Lugdunum in late 2002, while maintaining backward compatibility.

To overcome this problem MetaMachine, the company developing the original eDonkey client, developed a "successor" of the eDonkey protocol called Overnet, www.overnet.com. eMule has developed a Kademlia network of their own, generally called Kad, to overcome this reliance on central servers. Emule also has a pure P2P client source exchange capability, allowing a client with a 'High ID', i.e. no firewall preventing incoming connections, and a few files well flushed with sources initally acquired from KAD or an ED2K server to keep uploading and downloading for a day or longer after complete disconnection from KAD and ED2K server (Emule won't UDP-query secondary servers when told to disconnect from the server). The source-exchange capability was designed to reduce the load on the servers and KAD by two-thirds or more for files that have a significant quantity of 'seeds', or clients providing sources for the files. MetaMachine Edonkey (eD Hybrid), the 4th or 5th place client for user count on the ED2K network that recently shut down in fear of the RIAA, can not do source exchanges.

[edit] History

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.[2] The Razorback2 server is no longer online. 'Donkey Server No. 2' and 'Donkey Server No. 1' currently combine for over a million users.

[edit] Clients

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

  • aMule: a cross-platform fork from lMule and xMule that focus on unix platforms.
  • eDonkey2000: a client of MetaMachine which has been discontinued.
  • eMule: an open source Windows client which is the most popular client, with 80% of network users. Also runs on Linux under Wine. There are also lots of Mods of eMule.
  • Hydranode: an open source multi-network cross-platform core-gui separated client.
  • Jubster: a multi-network client for Windows.
  • Lphant: a multi-network (eDonkey and BitTorrent) cross-platform core-GUI separated client that runs on the Microsoft .NET or Mono platform.
  • MLDonkey: a free software client that runs on many platforms and supports numerous other file-sharing protocols as well.
  • Morpheus: a file sharing client for Microsoft Windows users.
  • Pruna (formerly, MediaVAMP): a Korean-only client based on eMule.
  • Shareaza: an open source multi-network client for Microsoft Windows users.


[edit] The eDonkey client RIAA agreement and its effect on the network

Main article: eDonkey2000

On September 13, 2006, the firm behind the eDonkey2000 client, MetaMachine Inc, agreed to pay $30 million dollars to avoid potential copyright infringement lawsuits from the RIAA. As per the agreement, eDonkey will discontinue distribution of their software as well as to take measures to prevent file-sharing by using previous copies of their software. The actual impact of the RIAA agreement on the ED2K network as a whole has been very small. This is because eMule has been the dominant client on the network since 2002; it already represented over 90% of the network at the time of the agreement. [3] eDonkey was also outnumbered by the minority clients aMule and Shareaza, the 2nd and 3rd largest minority (by far) clients in terms of usage.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ e.g. see this emule [forum]
  2. ^ News story about raid on large eDonkey server in EU
  3. ^ GreatInca's blog eMule Usage Statistics - Shows the vast majority of the ed2k clients being open source Emule clients. When including the 'eM Compat' clients (mostly eMule Plus clients), over 90% of the clients are eMule clients.Edonkey is identified as edhybrid in these stats.

[edit] External links

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