MLDonkey - Definition and Overview

MLDonkey is an open source multi-network peer-to-peer application. It is also the name of the P2P overlay that the MLDonkey uses. Originally a Linux client for the eDonkey protocol, it now runs on many flavors of Unix, Mac OS X, and Windows and supports numerous peer-to-peer protocols. Development proceeds at a rapid rate, and the MLDonkey team was the second to crack the encrypted FastTrack network protocol.

The original developer of MLDonkey is Fabrice Le Fessant from INRIA.

MLDonkey supports the following protocols, either partially or completely:

• BitTorrent
• DirectConnect - As many users of the MLDonkey client (mldc) choose to report inflated share sizes, mldc is not welcome to many DC hubs, and violates the common "no fake shares" rule
• eDonkey
• FastTrack
• Gnutella
• Gnutella2
• Overnet
• OpenNap
• SoulSeek

Written in the Ocaml programming language and licensed under the GPL, the application strictly separates the user interface (which can be a web browser, telnet, or a third-party GUI application) and the code that interacts with the peer-to-peer networks.

Development of the software began in late 2001.

External links

• MLDonkey project page (http://www.nongnu.org/mldonkey/)
• Major MLdonkey support page (http://mldonkey.berlios.de/)