The World of Peer-to-Peer (P2P)/Networks and Protocols/Other Software Implementations

JXTA
JXTA™ technology, created by Sun™ ( http://www.jxta.org ), is a set of open protocols that allow any connected device on the network ranging from cell phones and wireless PDAs to PCs and servers to communicate and collaborate in a P2P manner. JXTA peers create a virtual network where any peer may interact with other and their resources directly even when some of the peers and resources are behind firewalls and NATs or are on different network transports. The project goals are interoperability across different peer-to-peer systems and communities, platform independence, multiple/diverse languages, systems, and networks, and ubiquity: every device with a digital heartbeat. The technology is licensed using the Apache Software License (similar to the BSD license).

Most of the implementation is done in Java (with some minor examples in C).

iFolder
iFolder ( http://www.ifolder.com ) is an still in early development open source application, developed by Novell, Inc., intended to allow cross-platform file sharing across computer networks by using the Mono/.Net framework.

iFolder operates on the concept of shared folders, where a folder is marked as shared and the contents of the folder are then synchronized to other computers over a network, either directly between computers in a peer-to-peer fashion or through a server. This is intended to allow a single user to synchronize their files between different computers (for example between a work computer and a home computer) or share files with other users (for example a group of people who are collaborating on a project).

The core of the iFolder is actually a project called Simias. It is Simias which actually monitors files for changes, synchronizes these changes and controls the access permissions on folders. The actual iFolder clients (including a graphical desktop client and a web client) are developed as separate programs that communicate with the Simias back-end.

The iFolder client runs in two operating modes, enterprise sharing (with a server) and workgroup sharing (peer-to-peer, or without a server).

Freenet
The Freenet Project ( http://freenetproject.org ), designed to allow the free exchange of information over the Internet without fear of censorship, or reprisal. To achieve this Freenet makes it very difficult for adversaries to reveal the identity, either of the person publishing, or downloading content. The Freenet project started in 1999, released Freenet 0.1 in March 2000, and has been under active development ever since.

Freenet is unique in that it handles the storage of content, meaning that if necessary users can upload content to Freenet and then disconnect. We've discovered that this is a key requirement for many Freenet users. Once uploaded, content is mirrored and moved around the Freenet network, making it very difficult to trace, or to destroy. Content will remain in Freenet for as long as people are retrieving it, although Freenet makes no guarantee that content will be stored indefinitely.

The journey towards Freenet 0.7 began in 2005 with the realization that some of Freenet's most vulnerable users needed to hide the fact that they were using Freenet, not just what they were doing with it. The result of this realization was a ground-up redesign and rewrite of Freenet, adding a "darknet" capability, allowing users to limit who their Freenet software would communicate with to trusted friends. This would make it far more difficult for a third-party to determine who is using Freenet.

Freenet 0.7 also embodies significant improvements to almost every other aspect of Freenet, including efficiency, security, and usability. Freenet is available for Windows, Linux, and OSX. It can be downloaded from:

Software Implementations
All software is available on The Freenet Project page.

Frost an application for Freenet that provides usenet-like message boards and file uploading/downloading/sharing functionalities. It should get installed with Freenet 0.7 automatically if you used the standard Freenet installers.

jSite is a graphical application that you can use to create, insert and manage your own Freenet sites. It was written in Java by Bombe.

Thaw is a filesharing utility and upload/download manager. It is used as a graphical interface for Freenet filesharing.

KaZaa
KaZaa ( http://www.kazaa.com )

Software (FastTrack) Implementations

 * Kazaa
 * Kazaa Lite
 * Diet Kaza
 * giFT
 * Grokster
 * iMesh

GNUnet
GNUnet ( http://gnunet.org/ ), was started in late 2001, as a framework for secure peer-to-peer networking that does not use any centralized or otherwise trusted services. The framework provides a transport abstraction layer and can currently encapsulate the network traffic in UDP (IPv4 and IPv6), TCP (IPv4 and IPv6), HTTP, or SMTP messages. All peer-to-peer messages in the network are confidential and authenticated.

The primary service build on top of the framework is anonymous file sharing, implemented on top of the networking layer allows anonymous censorship-resistant file-sharing. GNUnet uses a simple, excess-based economic model to allocate resources. Peers in GNUnet monitor each others behavior with respect to resource usage; peers that contribute to the network are rewarded with better service.

GNUnet is part of the GNU project. Our official GNU website can be found at ( http://www.gnu.org/software/gnunet/ ), there is only an existing client, OpenSource, GPL, written in C, that shares the same name as the network. GNUnet can be downloaded from this site or the GNU mirrors.

MANOLITO (MP2P)
MANOLITO or MP2P is the internal protocol name for the proprietary peer-to-peer file sharing network developed by Pablo Soto. MANOLITO uses UDP connections on port 41170 for search routing and is based on Gnutella. In addition file transfers use a proprietary protocol based on TCP.

MANOLITO hosts obtain an entry into the network by contacting an HTTP network gateway, which returns a list of approximately one-hundred MANOLITO hosts. Hosts can also be manually connected to. Servents maintain contact with a fixed number of peers (depending on the Internet connection) that are sent search queries and results.

Software Implementations

 * Blubster ( http://www.blubster.com ), first implementation of the MP2P protocol, closed source but freeware for Windows.
 * Piolet ( http://www.piolet.com ), closed source but freeware for Windows.

Mute File Sharing
MUTE File Sharing ( http://mute-net.sourceforge.net ) is an anonymous, decentralized search-and-download file sharing system. MUTE uses algorithms inspired by ant behavior to route all messages, include file transfers, through a mesh network of neighbor connections. Author Jason Rohrer - jcr13 (at) cornell (dot) edu Created using C++ and Crypto++ Library, support is provided for multiple OSs there is a frontend for Windows created with MFC, Mute is Open Source and released under the GPL License.

iMesh
iMesh ( http://www.imesh.com ), a free but closed source P2P network (IM2Net) operating on ports 80, 443 and 1863, for Widows. iMesh is owned by an American company iMesh, Inc. and maintains a development center in Israel. An agreement with the MPAA had also been reached. Video files more than 50mb in size and 15 minutes in length can no longer be shared on the iMesh network, guaranteeing feature-length releases cannot be transferred across the network.

BitCoop
BitCoop (http://bitcoop.sourceforge.net/) created by Philippe Marchesseault is a console (Text Based) peer to peer backup system that enables the storage of files on remote computers with cryto and compression support. The size of files depends on the quantity you wish to share with the other peers. It is intended for server farms that wish to backup data among themselves. Supports various Operating Systems including Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, it's implemented in Java (Open Source under the GPL).

CSpace
CSpace (http://cspace.in/) provides a platform for secure, decentralized, user-to-user communication over the Internet. The driving idea behind the CSpace platform is to provide a connect(user,service) primitive, similar to the sockets API connect(ip,port). Applications built on top of CSpace can simply invoke connect(user,service) to establish a connection. The CSpace platform will take care of locating the user and creating a secure, nat/firewall friendly connection. Thus the application developers are relieved of the burden of connection establishment, and can focus on the application-level logic! CSpace is developed in Python. It uses OpenSSL for crypto, and Qt for the GUI. CSpace is licensed under the GPL.

I2P
I2P is a generic anonymous and secure peer to peer communication layer. It is a network that sits on top of another network (in this case, it sits on top of the Internet). It is responsible for delivering a message anonymously and securely to another location.

p300
p300 (http://p300.eu/) is a P2P application created in Java with the intention of provide a just-works-single-download solution for a multitude of Operating Systems without the need to deal with user accounts or specific protocol and security configurations (ie. samba). Another aspect is that p300 is primarily meant to be used in LANs or over VPNs. This application is OpenSource released under the GNU GPL v3.

Netsukuku
Netsukuku (http://netsukuku.freaknet.org/) is a p2p (in mesh) network system, originally developed by FreakNet MediaLab, that can generate and sustain itself autonomously. It is designed to handle an unlimited number of nodes with minimal CPU and memory resources. It seems that it can be easily used to build a worldwide distributed, anonymous decentralized network, above the Internet, without the support of any servers, ISPs or authority controls. Netsukuku replaces the network level 3 of the OSI model with another routing protocol. An open source Python implementation was finished in October 2007.

Netsukuku is based on a very simple idea: extending the concept of Wi-Fi mesh networks to a global scale, although not necessarily using that medium. With the use of specialized routing protocols and algorithms, the current Wi-Fi technologies can be exploited to allow the formation of a global P2P wireless network, where every peer (node) is connected to its neighbors.

Other media will be equally functional to interconnect nodes, as the interaction is independent of that which it is transmitted through, but it is believed that Wi-Fi will be the most practical for ordinary users to take advantage of. Once greater proliferation has been achieved, it may become common to see some nodes establishing high-speed land-line connections between each other in the interest of increasing network bandwidth for connections over it and lowering latencies.

Adobe's RTMFP (Real Time Media Flow Protocol) Groups
The RTMFP is a closed protocol/implementation based on the creation of Amicima, a start-up founded in 2004 focused in the development of improved Internet protocols for client-server and peer-to-peer networking and derived applications ( p2p-hackers - amicima's MFP - preannouncement, Jul 2005, MFP - The Secure Media Flow Protocol - version 1), that was acquired by Adobe for inclusion into the Flash platform, that gives developers the ability to stream data to endpoints without going through a central server (Flash Media Server). This addition to the Flash player v10.1+ capabilities enables most P2P network needs to be performed on Flash. No much information is available on the implementation yet. The presentation is available in a flash video ( http://tv.adobe.com/watch/max-2009-develop/p2p-on-the-flash-platform-with-rtmfp ).

Other

 * Thunderbolt (aka Thunder) (http://www.xunlei.com/) was created by Xunlei Network Technology Ltd. Thunderbolt proprietary P2P network supports Multi-protocol P2P resources (supports BitTorrent, eDonkey, Kad, and FTP) and also HTTP downloads (a download accelerator) as it web caches to aid in accelerating of downloads. It is mainly used in the Mainland China, recently an English translation has been released. Of particularly interest is that on January 5, 2007, Google acquired a 4% stake on the company.


 * Cassandra (http://code.google.com/p/the-cassandra-project/) a Structured Storage System on a P2P Network for managing structured data while providing reliability at a massive scale. Made in Java under the Apache License 2.0.


 * Aimini (http://www.aimini.com/), windows freeware.


 * TinyP2P ( http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/tinyp2p.html ), claims to be The World's Smallest P2P Application, written in fifteen lines of code, in the Python programming language.


 * |Microsoft Secure Content Downloader, closed source, Windows and Microsoft specific P2P application.


 * XNap ( http://xnap.sourceforge.net/ ) OpenSource (GPL), written in Java. The client features a modern Swing based user interface and console support. Able to work in several P2P Networks OpenNap, Gnutella, Overnet and OpenFT (and other networks supported by giFT like FastTrack). It also supports ICQ and IRC, viewers for MP3 tags, images, PDF, ZIP files and Text-To-Speech.


 * Filetopia ( http://www.filetopia.com ), a free but closed source server/clients P2P application for Windows. It includes, instant messaging, chat and file sharing system with a search engine, online friends list and message boards. It also supports the use of a bouncer (open source,Java) as an anonymity layer, that enables indirect connections.


 * Carracho ( http://www.carracho.com ), freeware but closed sourced P2P application to MacOS X.


 * SockeToome ( http://www.blackdiamond.co.za/bdsock.html ), shareware P2P application for Mac and Windows.


 * FilePhile ( http://www.filephile.net ), closed source but freeware, Java-based and so multi-platform application.


 * Napster network
 * WinMX
 * Napigator
 * FileNavigator


 * WPNP network
 * WinMX


 * other networks
 * InterPlanetary File System- protocol and network designed to create a content-addressable, peer-to-peer method of storing and sharing hypermedia in a distributed file system. Initially designed by Juan Benet, and now open-sourced.
 * MojoNation
 * Carracho
 * Hotwire
 * Chord peer-to-peer lookup service|Chord
 * Dexter
 * Swarmcast
 * Alpine program|Alpine
 * Scribe
 * Groove
 * Squid_Soft|Squid
 * Akamai
 * Evernet
 * Overnet network
 * Audiogalaxy network
 * SongSpy network
 * The Circle
 * OpenFT


 * Acquisition
 * Cabos
 * Swapper
 * SoulSeek