eDonkey2000 is a file-sharing program, like Napster or Gnutella. Like Napster, eDonkey is server based, and, like Gnutella, any type of file can be transferred over eDonkey. There is no central eDonkey server, and while the system is not as fundamentally cool as Gnutella's peer-to-peer network, it works much faster and supports a bunch of great features. Files can be downloaded from multiple users, and downloads automatically resume from session to session. Files can be uploaded as they're downloading. Also, files aren't downloaded from start to finish, instead the donkey just grabs whichever parts happen to be available. That's probably confusing. Try it out and you'll understand.

It works a lot better than Gnutella did, in my opinion, and it just needs some support now.

www.eDonkey2000.org "Harness the power of 2000 electronic donkeys!"


update: 10/2/03
At long last, broadband internet access is available in these barracks, and I realize now that there now exists a decentralized version of the donkey that is completely peer-to-peer, much the way Gnutella is, I imagine, as well as a third-party version that uses the same server network (as the donkey).

At the time of writing, a person who wants to get online with eDonkey right away, and does not want to bother with details, will have a difficult time with eDonkey. However, a person who is willing to spend some time reading, and learning about eDonkey, will be able to use it quickly and easily to download files.

eDonkey views files in terms of chunks, because of this, even if an eDonkey client only has a single chunk of a file, that client could still be sending that chunk to other users who do not have it, while still downloading other chunks.

Another advantage of eDonkey, is that hyperlinks can be used to allow a person to download files, or connect to a particular server on the eDonkey network. This has resulted in the creation of websites and bulletin boards, for posting those links, such as: ShareReactor (http://www.sharereactor.com) and FileNexus (http://www.filenexus.com)

These are the ports that eDonkey uses:

TCP 4661: This port is the default port that an eDonkey server listens for connections on.

TCP 4662: This port is used for clients to connect to each other. If you have a firewall, this is the port that needs to be forwarded to the computer which is running eDonkey.

UDP 4665: This port is open on an eDonkey server, and is used for clients to communicate with a server other than the one they are currently connected to.

One must also mention that with the help and backup of some crackers and their sites, eDonkey 2000 is one of the greatest sources for software. Most software there actually works, and is found mostly in either in *.bin (+ its respective *.cue file) or as ISOs. Sites like www.sharereactor.com and www.donkey-fakes.de are very helpful. The first one gives very useful info about what to download, while the second one has a list of all fakes reported there.

Visit www.edonkey2000.org (eDonkey's Site) to download the client.

Please note that it can be very system hungry, so be careful when to leave it running, as it can use up to 100/100 of your system's resources at times (even with an AMD 1700+ with 512 Mb DDR RAM)

eDonkey is also (almost) completely cross-platform.
It currently runs on Microsoft Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.

eDonkey users connect to eachother through user run servers. These servers cache the users files, so when your client looks for a file, it knows who to download it from. The downloads are done through a direct connection between you and the other user.

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