The Difference Between Them All

**gildan2020** · 03-01-2004, 02:29 AM

Q: Overnet, eDonkey, Hybrid, eMule? What's the difference?

A: It all started with eDonkey2000 a long time ago. The developers of eDonkey2000 realized that server based p2ps would eventually hit a major wall when attempting to scale to larger number of clients, so they decided to make a version that didn't need a server to connect to other users. This became Overnet.

In the meantime eMule was born. A client based on (some say stolen from) eDonkey2000. eMule became an open source project where everybody could make its on version of a client connecting to the eDonkey network.

Overnet took some time to get a reasonable user base, although it's serverless concept and improved protocol is technically superior to clients needing a server.

And because a p2p network depends largely on the amount of users, the Hybrid came to the front. This hybrid client is still called eDonkey and it can use a server to connect but also connects to the Overnet network. The best off both worlds.

So if you download your client from the mainpage you get the hybrid eDonkey. If you are interested in the Overnet concept, check www.overnet.com.

Definitions:

eDonkey - server based p2p developed by MetaMachine which now connects to the Overnet network which is serverless.
eMule - server based p2p based on eDonkey but development is opensource.
Hybrid - See eDonkey.
Overnet - serverless p2p developed by MetaMachine to overcome eDonkey's scalability problems.

courtesy of Official Overnet Forum

now here's my question, who has tried the Hybrid before? is it really the best of both edonkey and overnet?

thx

**seiya_33** · 03-01-2004, 05:12 AM

well ive used overnet and emule , and edonkey gave me the best download speeds , this hybrid , i have no idea what your talkin about ,

**kazaadude** · 03-01-2004, 06:06 AM

I've also used all three, and I'm currently using the hybrid (the current edonkey). I have a slow internet cable connection, and this is my experience with these 3 programs.

Emule: slow but even downloading. it'll take quite some time to finish downloading a movie, but if you download a bunch of them at the same time, they'll usually end up finishing close to each other. The upload speeds are usually significantly higher than the download speeds, specially when you first use emule.

Overnet/edonkey: because of the hoard (which seems similar to bit torrent), there are much, much faster downloads per file, specially the one you chose for the highest priority. Also, the overall download speeds are much higher, and usually also higher than the upload speeds, even as you just start using it.

Edonkey: edonkey actually has overnet built into it. When you start it, it immediately connects via the "serverless" overnet method. You can, however, also connect to edonkey servers if you want, so that you'd be connected simultaneously to both, giving you another way to access more users/files.

When i ran edonkey without connecting to a server, I was getting some good connections and good speed (definitely better download/upload ratio than emule) via the overnet connection. When I decided to connect to an Edonkey server with lots of users/files indexed through it, my download and upload ratios increased dramatically.

The bad part with servers is that you can get kicked out (specially if you're downloading way too many files at the same time; 20 or less is good).

Download Edonkey and you'll be able to connect either via overnet only, or both overnet and edonkey servers; your choice. I think the edonkey servers help out more people with slower cable connections. Those with fast connections don't usually need the edonkey servers.

Tips: the default "connections" is set to 45; change it to a higher number, maybe 500 or 200 or 100. The more connections, the more sources, the faster your downloads. Also, if you have a router, make sure you forward your ports; there's a whole lot of posts here on this.

Hope this helps

**Arathorn** · 03-01-2004, 09:26 AM

eMule is my favourite, espescially with Kad now.

But you should just try all of them if you really want to know the differences, much depends on your own preferences.

**MUSLEMAN** · 03-01-2004, 10:11 AM

overnet/edonkey, the Hybrid, is suppose to be the best of both worlds

**tbb_ensae** · 03-01-2004, 02:44 PM

is it better than overnet pro? (lite, of course

)
b²

**powerstick** · 03-01-2004, 09:12 PM

I don't know but emule is really slow and it kicks me from servers a lot so I don't use it. I haven't tried edonkey but I always use Overnet. I almost always max out my connection speed. Remember always use verified links to dl files. There are a lot of fakes.

**Switeck** · 03-01-2004, 10:02 PM

Originally posted by kazaadude@1 March 2004 - 01:06
Tips: the default "connections" is set to 45; change it to a higher number, maybe 500 or 200 or 100. The more connections, the more sources, the faster your downloads. Also, if you have a router, make sure you forward your ports; there's a whole lot of posts here on this.

If you're on a wireless connection, especially if using a wireless router that's more than 20 feet away from your computer, then even 50 connections at once may cause lots of lost data/failed connections.

Windows 95,98, and ME have a hard-coded socket/connection limitation of 100 connections at a time. If you set E-donkey to make more than that, you will only end up with worse results.

Even Win 2k/XP has TROUBLE with more than ~200 connections at once if there's even a tiny thing wrong with the networking drivers for your network card or firmware of your router.

And also some firewall programs cannot easily handle 100's to 1,000's of connections going through them per second -- not that many internet connections could handle that anyway.