Are files globally identified in Gnutella...

T

Tenshi!!!!!!!!!!

New member
Hi Gnutella Experts,

I was checking out the Gnutella specs, and it seems to me that files are assigned a File_Index as a local identifier on the hosting peer. But Is there a global identifier for files in the network, or is keyword searching the only common property between same files on different hard disks?

Thanks in advance for your help
 
The File Index is fairly useless, it exists merely for historic reasons. Besides keyword searches, some clients implement and allow searches by SHA-1 (urn:sha1). At the moment LimeWire does not support them and it is planned to re-implement this feature more efficiently using a distributed hashtable (DHT).

Almost all search results - except those from poor clients and some spam - carry an urn:sha1 along with them. This is the proper way to download the same file from multiple peers.
 
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