Suprnova's eXeem beta review and screenshots

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Reply-To: <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Date: Fri, 31 Dec 2004 02:04:46 -0800
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Suprnova's eXeem beta review and screenshots

Suprnova's eXeem beta review and screenshots
   #43166 - 12/10/04 03:25 AM Attachment (1067 downloads)
<http://www.mitosis.com/sections/forum/showflat.php?
Board=web_news&Number=43166>

  Bit torrent websites are doomed. The trackers they offer make them
nice, fat targets for the MPAA/RIAA and they're potential single pionts
of failure due to hardware and/or bandwidth issues. Can P2P survive?
Only if it evolves.

  Some Background:
Here's a quick n' dirty BitTorrent operational description. The
bittorrent file download and distribution concepts take some
understanding. You'll find terms like "seeds" and "trackers" with
lengthy descriptions but to simplify things, all you need to understand
here is that a single seed file (complete file) is needed to start the
process. Once enough users connect and start downloading the file,
additional users can begin to get pieces of the file from eachother.
Bits of the file that one user has already downloaded become available
to other users. The tracker receives information from all downloaders
and gives them random lists of peers (other downloaders) to draw from.
In essence, you could download a complete file from other downloaders
and never once get any data directly from the original seed file. This
means that the original seed file source location never gets swamped.
Even better, the more people downloading that file actually increases
your download speed since you'll have more sources to draw from.

  The problem:
All the info you need to have your bittorrent application connect to a
tracker and start downloading is stored in a tiny text file with a
".torrent" extension. The problem is, where do you get these .torrent
files? There are a few websites that have created elaborate systems to
offer the .torrent files but to display how many seeds and users are
currently connected to that "torrent". Today, one of the largest of
these sites, suprnova.org receives so much traffic that it has become a
bottleneck in the system. Even worse, the dependancy on a website to
get torrents has become a single point of failure.

  The Solution:
What's needed is a program that decentralizes the way we find and
distribute torrent and tracker data. The idea is to remove the single
point of failure by having each person running the application share
torrent and tracker data with eachother in almost the same way file
data from a torrent download is shared with all users.

  Suprnova.org's vision of the future is called eXeem. It's an
application that promises to change the face of p2p file distribution
by encorporating bittorrent technology in a way that solves the
problems listed above. The beta version of eXeem is running at version
..15 and is only accessible to 5,000 beta testers. There is currently no
date set for a public release. Thanks to one of our own Mitosis members
(to remain unnamed) I had the ability to try eXeem tonight. Below is my
review and some screenshots.

[snip]

Archives at: <http://Wireless.Com/Dewayne-Net>
Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>


------ End of Forwarded Message


-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com
To manage your subscription, go to
  http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/