| Product: |
Bearshare |
| Date: |
09/03/01 (86 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Greatly expanding network
Disadvantages: Takes a little getting used to, quite a lot of questionable material: maybe not for younger users
Goodbye Napster. Hello Bearshare.
Over the past few months file sharing has jumped into the limelight with programs such as Napster causing much controversy, allowing users to share mp3 music files over which they do not have distribution rights. The US courts are pushing through the courts measures to close Napster down - But the public now want to use file sharing programs - So what next?
In steps the Gnutella Network. The original Gnutella program defined a protocol for networked file sharing - Using a different model to Napster.
With Napster all the users log onto a central server, which processes their information and allows the searching and sharing. Remove the central server and the Napster program is useless.
Bearshare is the client and the server at once. You log onto someone else's machine, they are connected to several people, people connect to you. What results is a massive web of computer, sending searches, and serving files between them. Bearshare is an up-to-date program using the underlying Gnutella-Net model. This model is Peer-to-Peer networking - No central server.
What Bearshare allows is not just the sharing of Mp3 music files, but files of any type. This is an advantage for people searching for music videos, films etc, however as with the regular Internet there is a fair bit of material which younger users should not be viewing.
Bearshare is fairly easy to get into - It connects to the network automatically, and the user documentation is fairly well made up. There are "tabs" for the Gnutella-Network, allowing you to control your connections; searches, you can search for multiple files at once; downloads, including options for speed limitations etc, and statistics/upload monitors.
If you are looking for an alternative to Napster then bearshare might be for you. Visit bearshare.net for more information
Jamie
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