mith used our newssubmit to tell us about Alpine.
Alpine is a new open source project that wants to minimize the well known Gnutella problems. It uses a "new" protocol very similar to UDP and wants to minimize load on clients. From the Alpine page:
There are a number of known problems with current peer based searching implementations. Alpine is designed to eliminate or minimize these problems using an alternate protocol and implementation. Specific features which provide for a robust peer based searching infrastructure are: |
- High concurrent connection support. (over 100,000)
- Adaptive configuration for enhanced accuracy and quality of responses.
- True flat peer-to-peer network. No hierarchy, no central servers.
- Low communication overhead. (small UDP packets, no forwarding)
For those who are not in to the Gnutella and Napster thing, Gnutella is a file sharing network that uses no central server. The central server is the current weak point of Napster and makes that it can be blocked by law.
Gnutella doesn't have a central server, but the current protocol makes that the network is very slow, because too many traffic is involved just because of the system Gnutella uses and not because of the files that are shared.
If you want to know more about Gnutella and Napster then read our article here
Source: Alpine
