ANts 0.8.1 Faster Anonymous P2P Downloads

[Hornet]

Ants 0.8.1 was just released.

The Changes are as follows (see below for explanation):

-Sliding window for HTTP request handling (HTTP Speedup)
-Debugged Random walk algorithm (inactive nodes disconnection)
-TTLess protocol (routing with unaged messages: no Time To Live involved)
-Queries by default (no more imprecise results)
-Queries over extended contents
-File Preview (this did not work for me, needs debugging)
-File Comments (Rehashing required!)
-GUI freaks (Downloads and Uploads labels) (this is comsmetic)

COMMENTS ABOUT IMPROVEMENTS

Sliding window for HTTP request handling
As well as file sharing ANts allows users to host web sites anonymously by running a web server like apache. To keep the web site anonymous the use also needs to have a fire wall blocking port 80 and 8080 access. This change speeds up the download of pages.

Debugged Random walk algorithm
ANts is a P2P2P application with files being transfer in hops between peers from source to destination. Obviously the fewer hops the faster the transfer and the lower the total bandwidth used. The random walk algorithm moves the start point of a transfer nearer to the source so fewer hops are used so files transfer faster and less bandwidth used.

TTLess protocol
The time to live (TTL) for queries has been removed. This means that ANts will search the entire network for files and will not stop after a certain number of hops. This combined with the use of distributed hash table (DHT) enables uses to locate any file on ANts wherever it is in the world (on 40 users anyway :) )

File Preview
Should now be able to preview files before a download has finished.


File Comments
Comments now can be added to files this paves the way ANts being used as an ed2k archive. This is beacuse Ants saves queries in a distributed hash table. So you can search ANts to find eDonkey and eMule links. These can then be used in those programs.

available from:
Download here: http://www.myjavaserver.com/~gwren/h...m&xmlName=ants

And also here: http://www.myjavaserver.com/~gwren/Ants/antsp2p.jnlp

Programmer: GWREN

Main Webpage: http://www.myjavaserver.com/~gwren/h...m&xmlName=ants

Source: http://www.myjavaserver.com/~gwren/h...m&xmlName=ants


This version involves a protocol change. Network may be unstable until everyone updates. I can also see that it will need some debugging, so look for another update tomorrow from Gwren (the hardest working p2p developer on the planet), it should be cleaned up by then :-)

Potential Future Updates
I predict that maybe in future potentially "random walkers" will be extended to offer users a choice between slower fully anonymous downloads, faster less anonymous using one hop proxy and faster still not anonymous using direct connection. Users using direct connection could form trusted private groups by exchanging certificates. ANts will then be suitable for all file sharers in competition with other 2nd gen networks. This is my (Hornet's) opinion only and does not reflect the opinion of the developer.

Hornet

Parts of this post are based on tsafa1 post http://www.zeropaid.com/news/article.../12192004g.php