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Napster vs. GnutellaMay 08 '01 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line As Napster is shut down, users are searching for its replacement. Is Gnutella the answer?
Now that Napster has been shut down by the greedy record companies. Many users are looking toward other options for "sharing" their files. There are many options available out there, but which one is the best. There is Napigator, Imesh, and the much talked about Gnutella. The most promising one of them all is the Gnutella format. Napster We all have grown to love Napsters ease of use and speedy connections. This is due to the way Napster is set up. Napster uses central servers; this way they can optimize performance. These servers are held at Napsters main headquarters and hold members registrations, shared filed lists, and other information regarding usage. However the transfer of files is still between users not between the central server and the user, this in turn uses the users bandwidth and diskspace. When you execute your Napster Client, you log onto one of their servers. Once you log on, you upload a list of the music on your hard-drive. When you search for a song on Napster, it is logged in the central server at Napster HQ, along with your ID and your IP address. When you start to download, you are downloading from another Napster user, but you are doing so via "Napsters proprietary protocol." After the song is done, the Napster client on your computer then reports back to Napster, giving them all your info once again, including username, IP adress, and the song name that you just downloaded. This type of model is appeals to many people, especially those interested in your information. That is why the record industry is interested in Napster, for if they can control it they can exploit is somehow. Gnutella Gnutella, which many hail as the next Napster, works on a completely different format. Gnutella as born at AOL's Nullsoft division. It is also a P2P client, or person to person meaning there is no server. There are also many versions of the Gnutella client available on the web. There is BearShare, Aimster, Gnotella, and Gnewtella just to name a few. Although Gnutella is much more complicated this is a basic rundown of how it works. Unlike Napster there are no central servers in the Gnutella client. Using the Gnutella app, you are acting as both the server and the client, with a network of similar users. Before exchanging files the IP address of another peer needs to be obtained. Your computer sends a ping to another computer on the network. Another computer responds with a pong announcing its IP address and file sharing information. That computer also forwards your ping to other Gnutella users. This happens over and over, thus forwarding your ping, along with your file sharing information across the network. After each computer is Pinged by you they respond with a pong. This is highly inefficient, thus bandwidth is a must. Your computer then catches the pongs and collects Ip addresses. When you search, your computer then searches all the computers that have ponged you. Users of other software but on the same Gnutella client are also on the network and thus searched as well. Each computer then searches the local hard-drive for your query. If there is an result, the results are routed to your computer containing the IP address and the matching file name. With the Gnutella client, your search keeps on continues until you manually stop it. When you click on a file to download, your computer makes the request via a standard HTTP request, like when you type in a website address. The computer that hosts your file sends back the file via http. This makes Gnutella networks hard to shut down because file transfers look like ordinary web-traffic. Rundown As you can see, Gnutella's structure is fully decentralized, so that you can search without ever soliciting a central server. This aspect makes it hard to shut down, for that you cannot shut down the central server for one does not exist. However this ability of stealthy file transfers, and inability to shut down this P2P based client transfer, also has it's trade-offs. Efficient transfers via client-server transactions are replaced with inefficient computer to computer that take up bandwidth. Thus the ease of use of Napster has the upper hand, however with the shutting down of Napster, users will have to turn to inefficient alternatives such as Gnutella.  |
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by texas-swede
