Frequently Asked Questions - General Networking
 

What Network should I connect to?

The best default if you are uncertain is for you to connect to Gnutella2 only. It should give you a good selection of files, and it will be easy to use. Try this first, and you can enable other networks later if you need to.
If you download large files, have a broadband connection, and run your client for long periods (do not go offline), then eDonkey2000 would be a good addition. The original Gnutella network still has a good selection of files, and might be worth connecting to if you can find the content you want there.

BitTorrent can also give you good performance when you find files you want on various BitTorrent sites.

Note that the more networks you connect to, the greater the overhead. This means you will have to spend more of your bandwidth maintaining network connections, and less downloading files. Modem users should connect to only one network!

Will you support the ... network?

eTomi is always working towards bettering itself and improving. However, if a network is going to be supported in eTomi , it has to be open & free. What does open & free, mean, exactly? Well, the specifications for the network have to be available. For example, the Gnutella2 network is open. Anyone is free to make a Gnutella2 client and the specs (specifications) are free and available online for anyone to access.

In addition, the eTomi user base must also be interested in the network. When BitTorrent & eDonkey2000 were added, they were added because the eTomi userbase used those networks. eTomi is here to be a "main" solution. Instead of using 4 different networks on 4 different clients, you can use them all in one easy to use client. This means it's unlikely that eTomi will add support for networks that have low popularity, because eTomi wants as many users as possible to benefit from any new features and additions. If only a handful of users are going to use (and appreciate) the addition of an entire new network (which is no easy task) then it's not really a good use of development time. If eTomi is going to add new features, then the large majority of eTomi 's users should find them useful.

Will you add support for Kazaa?

Short answer: No.
Long Answer: This program uses a network known as FastTrack, and is a closed network and requires hefty licensing fees to have access to. eTomi is a non-profit/free project and thus cannot pay for access to another network. If eTomi reverse-engineered the network protocol, then it could be shut down because that is illegal.

Basically, eTomi could either pay thousands upon thousands of dollars a month to connect to FastTrack, or use it illegally and live with the high possibility of being sued by the operators of FastTrack for even more money.

Will you add support for WinMX?

As with FastTrack, WinMX runs on a closed P2P Network. Thus eTomi does not know how it works and therefore cannot connect to it. This means you probably will never see any support for the WinMX network, unless WinMX opens it up.

What About Overnet?

Again, this is a closed network- just like the other two. In addition, it was created by the maker of eDonkey and is supported by the original eDonkey client. Connecting to it wouldn't provide that much new content, since the majority of it is on eDonkey2000 anyway.






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