FileShareFreak THE source for BitTorrent & P2P Tips, Tricks and Info.

Everyone is familiar with Shareaza for P2P filesharing. But there’s a neat little spinoff called ShareazaPlus that’s recently been released. ShareazaPlus is a mod version of Shareaza, and includes enhancements to significantly speed up downloads, file searches and networking performance under WinXP.

New Features

ShareazaPlus has added a few features to its original predecessor, Shareaza. New features include:

Search by URI:

Unheard of in the original Shareaza, ShareazaPlus allows for searching from a variety of known URNs / URIs, including SHA1, Tiger Tree, MD5, BitTorrent (BTiT), and eD2k. This is particularly handy if you already know (or have) a magnet link, but can’t find any sources.

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Store your files online, share your stuff and browse what other users store in the world’s largest multimedia library: The Omemo peer-to-peer virtual hard-drive.

Could Omemo be the next big thing that file sharers are looking for? Perhaps. We took it for a spin to see for ourselves.

What is it?

Omemo is a peer-to-peer file-sharing service that stores files on a virtual hard drive online. The service requires that users donate a small portion of the space on their hard drives, which are combined to form a collective virtual network. Shared files are not saved on the users’ hard drives; rather, the space is donated to the Omemo P2P network in a virtual online environment.

Features:

— Omemo is billed as a filesharing protocol that is as anonymous as (technically) possible (for both uploading and downloading).

— Content on Omemo is always accessible. No one can erase or alter the content of the Omemo “O” drive.

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Anyone who’s old enough to buy their own cigarettes is probably familiar with old skool P2P file sharing with KaZaA. And likely this same group probably even remembers when it just stopped working one day - dead in it’s tracks many moons ago. Do you remember where you were when KaZaA died? I do - I was at work and my girlfriend called me to tell me something was wrong with my computer; that KaZaA wasn’t working anymore. To soothe her, I said I’d check it out as soon as I got home, but I could hear the panic in her voice. Right as rain, KaZaA was in the grave - no warning, no notice - just a quick & painless death. “Whew…what a relief!”, I thought inwardly, “Now I can reclaim my hijacked computer and use IRC once again!”. No more blank movie files, no more MP3s with scritchy-scratchy bits and white noise, and best of all - no more bullshit from this RIAA scam & spam-flooded network. It truly was a day of rejoice. Good riddance to bad rubbish!

Anyways, KaZaA got sued and went legit. The only ‘known’ way to connect to the FastTrack network was to whip out a credit card, since it went entirely private and pay-to-use.

Flash ahead - four years later. We’ve tested over a hundred P2P programs, and not one has ever connected to the old KaZaA network known as FastTrack. We’ve tried KaZaA Lite, KaZaA Resurrection, KaZaA K Lite, K++, KLT K++ and every other KaZaA mutant. Many claimed and offered, but none delivered. That is, until today. Huzzah.

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(for Feb.13/08)

We’re always chompin’ at the bit to test out the latest P2P file sharing programs. So here’s a few more programs to get you connected and help you find your junk.

LionShare v1.2

Looking for the latest movies, software and music to download? Great! But you won’t find them with LionShare. LionShare is strictly an academic concept of legal file sharing, and connects to other users through university accounts. Users can search and retrieve academic content from other LionShare users and many academic networks across the globe. Be advised that LionShare is not intended for anonymous filesharing - and it requires user authentication to participate in sharing of your own files. If academia is your passion, give it a whirl! Here’s the developer’s tagline:

LionShare is a secure P2P file sharing application for higher education, enabling legal file sharing for Penn State university and beyond. Find and share legal academic content in a secure P2P environment.

Features include: Buddy List (Instant Messaging), multi-user chat (with different channels), and “browse host” to find similar content from the same users.

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AudioGnome
JLop
Lopster
Napster
SunshineUN
Utatane
WinMX
XNap
OUR PICKS

OpenNap is a peer-to-peer (P2P) service server. It was created as an ‘open source‘ Napster server, extending the Napster protocol to allow sharing of any media type (instead of just *.mp3 files), and adds the ability to link servers together. Today, OpenNap is still used the same way - all shared files are kept on each client’s machine but searching and indexing must pass through a central server (known as a centralized server) or group of servers. This is in direct contrast to Limewire and other second or third generation P2P services that are decentralized (and are much more difficult to shut down).

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Aimini
Allpeers
aMule
Cabos
Clickster
Deepnet
eMule Plus
ExoSee
FileCroc
Fusteeno
Gnucleus
Jubster
Manolito
MasterMax
MLDonkey
Mp3Rocket
OFF System
OpenNap
ourTunes
P2P Muzic
Phex
Ruckus
Sigster
Speedy P2P
Swapper.net
TED
Tribler
WinMX
OUR PICKS

FileShareFreak is doing what no other website will do: We are actually testing various P2P programs under WinXP, and giving a personal review in our own words - not just some ‘cut/paste’ from the software publisher’s website. All programs were tested to be functional* in Nov./Dec. 2007, all are ‘Freeware’, and all are free of adware/spyware (unless otherwise noted). *Functional being that they connect to a network (with other users) and generate search results.

Also, we don’t include everything on this list. There’s only so many clones of Limewire and eMule we can handle! (Open source software often gets a minuscule makeover, bundled with third party adware, toolbar addons etc. and viola! a new product is born! - most of which we don’t include here). If you really want a complete list of available P2P software, visit www.download.com and search for “P2P program” or “MP3 finders” - you’ll be inundated with clones and the like. Know a good P2P program that’s not on the list? Try our Top Ten P2P page, or add one in the comments at the bottom.

Additionally, we wanted a list of P2P programs that contained variety. Most of these programs connect to their own network, or to multiple networks, thus diversifying the search results available in P2P. What point would it serve if we only included a bunch of programs that connected solely to the Gnutella network? - all of the search results would be the same.

NOTE: Keep checking back at this page, we add new P2P File Sharing programs regularly! Although these programs are adware/spyware free, most of these applications are not considered P2P safe (i.e. “anonymous” or “encrypted traffic” type programs), unless they are properly configured via the Proxy (SOCKS) settings internally.

BitTorrent clients are not listed here, since there are only about three BT clients that should be used anyways (see here). Moreover, the BTclient is not at all indicative of good search queries - this quality is ordained by the BitTorrent website hosting the .torrent files.

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A list of P2P Networks and Clients

A P2P Network is a network consisting of other connected users, implemented for file sharing and transfers. To access a P2P network, users simply download and install a suitable P2P client application. P2P clients require a network to connect to, in order to join all of the users to each other that are using the same client (or other network-compatible clients). A common example would be Limewire - when you run the Limewire program, it connects to the Gnutella network. It is through the Gnutella network that all Limewire users are connected and thus all available files and searching. It would be fair to say that the network is actually more important than the client program - remove the network and the client has nothing to connect to.

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The term “Peer-to-peer file sharing” is, in essence, an umbrella term used to describe any protocol or method whereby users can share files with other users. This would include almost every activity on the Internet: ICQ (instant messaging); sending files through MSN or Yahoo!; web hosting services; BitTorrent; Usenet; IRC. Even email could be considered peer-to-peer file sharing.

But for all general purposes, “P2P file sharing” is best used to describe the swapping of music, video and other files over the Internet by means of a broad-based application on a common network with a large base of users. Some examples of this would be Limewire, Shareaza and eMule.

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Users require just two things: An Internet connection and P2P client software to connect you to the P2P network(s). This is a little easier than BitTorrent in terms of difficulty - as there are no necessary websites to visit or external files to download. Here’s a list of some of the available programs and which network(s) they run on:

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Our Top Ten Best Free P2P File Sharing Programs

This is a review of our top ten free P2P file sharing clients, with the PROs and CONs of each and the rankings. All programs were tested in October 2007 (and are thus deemed to be working). The list below represents the main “client” programs to connect to most of the major networks available.

And The Winner Is…

Limewire Pro 4.14 wins this race, but Bearshare 5.2.5 was right behind at #2. It’s too bad that they both connect to the same P2P network; the search results are very similar. And since they run on the largest network - Gnutella - naturally it contains highest number of search results and best speeds. And Shareaza offers perhaps the most comprehensive search results because it incorporates multiple networks, yet Limewire has more users (and thus more search results). But in pursuit of the obscure, other smaller networks offer a diverse ’set’ of search results from an entirely different clientele base.

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