Gnutella net appeared after older nets like Napster and P2P Audiogalaxy were closed down. To avoid disappearing like the aforementioned nets, it doesn't have a central server, all the users are both servers and clients at the same time.
LimeWire uses this well known protocol.
LimeWire is an application, published under the GNU GPL
open source license, created by Lime Wire LLC, company founded in 2000 with the '
boom' of the P2P nets. So, it is what we call a P2P client.
Peer to Peer (P2P) is system completely oppossed to the classic Client-Server method.
LimeWire is without any doubt the most important program that uses the Gnutella web (BearShare, Gnotella).
LimeWire allows it users to share all types of files: music, video, images, documents, applications, etc... Furthermore, it doesn't just share these files with it's own users, it also shares them with the users of any of the other Gnutella protocol clients. Since it's written in
Java,
LimeWire can be used on any computer that has the Jave virtual machine installed and an Internet connection.
LimeWire's main
features are:
- Support for both the
torrent and Gnutella nets.
- Quicker connection thanks to "
UDP Host Caches".
- Check the net to see what new files have been added.
- Allows the use of
web proxy's to hide users identification.
LimeWire is completely
free of any type of
spyware,
adware or other
malware. Furthermore, it includes an extensive language pack.
New features in the last version:
- Translations have been updated.
- Fixed some minor errors.