Digging into today's peer-to-peer apps

vsp · 07-23-2002, 12:11 PM

I'm trying to dig up video files (DivX, VCD, whatever) for some of my favorite cartoons -- Freakazoid, the Tick, Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, the Mighty Heroes, etc. Most of these are commercially unavailable, and I have little with which to tempt the tape-trader contingent.

Therefore, I took the plunge yesterday and tried out one of the modern peer-to-peer apps, eDonkey. I hadn't used any major P2P apps since Napster folded, so I wasn't entirely sure what to expect.

What I found was about what I did expect -- hordes of users, very slow connections, and about a 90/10 ratio of porn to non-porn content. Not that I have philosophical issues with porn, mind you, but its effects on bandwidth are obvious. When 4,281 people are all trying to download 700MB teen_doing_three_guys_and_a_donkey.mpg movies at once, things grind to a halt very quickly. (The MPAA has little to worry about; sure, there are movies on these servers, but by the time a download would complete the movie would already be out on video.)

Anyway, no sign of anything I wanted, though that's always subject to who's online at any given time.

I've shied away from Kazaa, given their adventures in distributed computing, and have heard that Gnutella has security issues. (Not that I'm running ANYTHING that I get off of a P2P site without three virus-scans and an electron-microscope examination.) Are there any other P2P sources I should look to?

(USENET seems the best bet for now -- dramatically faster downloads, though you're obviously limited to what others choose to post there.)

07-23-2002, 12:11 PM	#1
vsp Syndrome of a Down Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: West Chester Posts: 1,367	Digging into today's peer-to-peer apps I'm trying to dig up video files (DivX, VCD, whatever) for some of my favorite cartoons -- Freakazoid, the Tick, Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, the Mighty Heroes, etc. Most of these are commercially unavailable, and I have little with which to tempt the tape-trader contingent. Therefore, I took the plunge yesterday and tried out one of the modern peer-to-peer apps, eDonkey. I hadn't used any major P2P apps since Napster folded, so I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. What I found was about what I did expect -- hordes of users, very slow connections, and about a 90/10 ratio of porn to non-porn content. Not that I have philosophical issues with porn, mind you, but its effects on bandwidth are obvious. When 4,281 people are all trying to download 700MB teen_doing_three_guys_and_a_donkey.mpg movies at once, things grind to a halt very quickly. (The MPAA has little to worry about; sure, there are movies on these servers, but by the time a download would complete the movie would already be out on video.) Anyway, no sign of anything I wanted, though that's always subject to who's online at any given time. I've shied away from Kazaa, given their adventures in distributed computing, and have heard that Gnutella has security issues. (Not that I'm running ANYTHING that I get off of a P2P site without three virus-scans and an electron-microscope examination.) Are there any other P2P sources I should look to? (USENET seems the best bet for now -- dramatically faster downloads, though you're obviously limited to what others choose to post there.)

Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)