ed2k-fasttrack is a plugin for the eDonkey2000 file sharing program. It connects ed2k to FastTrack-based networks like KaZaa, allowing you to add download sources from outside the ed2k/overnet.
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How to use ed2k-fasttrack v 0.1
1) What is it?
Ed2k-fasttrack attaches sources from the FastTrack network to eDonkey200 downloads. This can seriously improve your download speed.
Version 0.1 is the first public beta release. I repeat, this is beta software. Use it at your own risk; I think it works but can't make any guarantees. If you run into problems, I'd like to hear about them; email me at [email protected].
Ed2k-fasttrack is based on the eDonkey plugin SDK from MetaMachines, the giFT peer-to-peer platform, and the giFT-FastTrack plugin. It uses source code from all of these, and many thanks go to their respective authors. To give credit where it's due, they did most of the real work; I just packaged it into a form usable by eDonkey. It is released under the GPL.
2) Where do I put it?
Unzip ed2k-fasttrack-0.1.zip into your eDonkey plugins directory, usually at C:\Program Files\eDonkey2000\Plugins. This will create four files: fasttrackplugin.dll, FastTrack\nodes, FastTrack\banlist, and FastTrack\FastTrack.conf. The nodes file is similar to eDonkey's contact.dat file - it's a list of addresses to contact first. The banlist is a list of addresses not to contact, usually because they're know host bad files. FastTrack.conf is the giFT-FastTrack project's configuration file.
3) How do I use it?
3a) The easy way
If enough people start using ed2k-fasttrack, it will automatically look for FastTrack sources for files; you won't need to do anything. Here's how this works.
Whenever an eDonkey client publishes a file, it calls its plugins and lets them add to the published information. Whenever it requests a file, it passes that added information to its plugins to see if they recognize it. Ed2k-fasttrack adds a FastTrack hash to the eDonkey hash, and whenever it sees one of these hashes on a file eDonkey is downloading it starts downloading from FastTrack.
The problem here is that both you and whoever originally published the file need to be using ed2k-fasttrack for this to work. Initially, this is unlikely, though it should get more likely as time goes on. This bring us to:
3b) The hard way
You find a FastTrack source manually and add it to the eDonkey file transfer that you started normally. To do this, you'll need to find a sig2dat: or magnet: URL for the same file (these are like ed2k: links for KaZaa and other FastTrack clients.)
Start the eDonkey download normally, find the sig2dat: link and copy it into the clipboard, got to the Transfers screen, right-click on the file you're transferring, select "Add Source...", check "Other source", paste the link, and hit OK. There. Wasn't that simple?
I've been using the TrustyFile client as a source for sig2dat: URLs while testing. I'd be interested to hear about other sources.
Ed2k-fasttrack handles two forms of URLs, "sig2dat: ... UUHash: <hash> ... " and "magnet: ... urn:sha1: <hash> ... ". I've tested a lot more heavily with sig2dat URLs, and am more confident they work. The magnet: spec seems to be new and not yet consistently implemented.
In this version there are no useful diagnostics. If your FastTrack file doesn't match your eDonkey file; if there are no sources for the file on FastTrack; if something just plain breaks, the FastTracj source will just quietly disappear. Maybe next version it'll say why.
4) How do I get rid of it?
Shut down eDonkey and delete fasttrackplugin.dll and the files in the FastTrack subdirectory.
5) What's wrong with it?
There are several features I'd like to get into a final release. It should upload to FastTrack as well as downloading from it. It needs a user interface, especially useful error messages. You should be able to limit the bandwidth it uses. It should try to connect to multiple sources simultaneously. It would be nice to be able to search the FastTrack networks directly. It shouldn't be too difficult to connect it to the Gnutella network as well, since giFT has a plugin for that. And, of course, it needs testing.
I don't know when (or whether) I'll have time to get to any of these. If you'd like to work on them, feel free - the source is available. If you'd like your work merged into the ed2k-fasttrack project, contact me at [email protected], and we can discuss it.
Sources:
ed2k-fasttrack:
<http://sourceforge.net/projects/ed2k-fasttrack/>
eDonkey plugin kit:
<http://download.overnet.com/donkeySDK.0.6.zip>
giFT:
<http://sourceforge.net/projects/gift/>
giFT-FastTrack:
<http://developer.berlios.de/projects/gift-fasttrack>
