Direct connect file-sharing application


Direct connect file-sharing application - Definition

de:Direct Connect pl:Direct Connect sv:Direct Connect

Direct Connect is (in its original incarnation) a peer-to-peer file sharing application written by Jon Hess at NeoModus. Today, however, the name most often refers to the network protocol that is used.

The Direct Connect network is not as de-centralised as Gnutella or FastTrack, since it uses hubs which connect a group of users. Hubs can be set up by any user that have the hardware and connection to handle it. Different hubs often have special areas of interest. Hubs often only admit users who share some set amount of datas or files. Chatting is built into the protocol since the start, and so most hubs are actually small communities, more than just filesharing.

The mentality on the Direct Connect network is a bit different from (most) other p2p-networks, as it has a very strong social ingredient in the form of chat, and privateness in the form of small hubs or even "reghubs": Hubs that only let in users already registered with a nick/password-pair. The protocol does not try to hide the identities of the peers, nor is it very optimized for swarm-downloading such as bittorrent since it lacks partial file-sharing and (in general) segmented or multisource downloading.

The original Neo-modus client has, in many users eyes, been superseded by other clients such as DC++, but still continues to be in wide use. The alternative open source clients are generally considered to have more features and fewer bugs than the original. There are in turn additional modified versions of these (see the DC++ article for a list of mods), developed for specialized communities (e.g., music-sharing communities) or for features that are either experimental or have been rejected to be included in the base client. There is continued interest to add requested features (such as ratings, language packs, etc.) to the Direct Connect-protocol/community, and mostly in a way that would allow the original Neo-modus client to cooperate with newer clients.

18th May 2004 Verlihub broke the 10.000 users barrier. Record was made on Czech national hub. Hub was located on university in Pardubice and running on Cesnet. Direct Connect network was supported by czech universities. There were two hubs 7000+ users, but now are both closed. Time has changed.

Direct Connect hubs seem to have difficulties scaling above 1,000 users, probably due to the broadcast-centricity of the protocol. It is not uncommon, however, to see five thousand or more users on a hub hosted on a 100 megabit connection. The current record of 10521 users was set on December 27, 2004 by the hub [PdoX]NEMESIS. Although is seems unlikely that all 10521 users were actually real users ("ghosts" are common), it's an impressive number. Many other Direct Connect file-sharing communities seek to keep their populations low, and their very existence under the radar of media industries seeking legal means to stem the flow of digital exchange of copyrighted material.

Contents

1 External links

1.1 Clients
1.2 Hubs
1.3 Protocol documentation

External links