January 02, 2008 by sharky
Aimini
Allpeers
aMule
Cabos
Clickster
Deepnet
eMule Plus
ExoSee
FileCroc
Fusteeno
Gnucleus
Jubster
Manolito
MasterMax
MLDonkey
Mp3Rocket
OFF System
OpenNap
ourTunes
P2P Muzic
Phex
Ruckus
Sigster
Speedy P2P
Swapper.net
TED
Tribler
WinMX
FileShareFreak is doing what no other website will do: We are actually testing various P2P programs under WinXP, and giving a personal review in our own words - not just some ‘cut/paste’ from the software publisher’s website. All programs were tested to be functional* in Nov./Dec. 2007, all are ‘Freeware’, and all are free of adware/spyware (unless otherwise noted). *Functional being that they connect to a network (with other users) and generate search results.
Additionally, we wanted a list of P2P programs that contained variety. Most of these programs connect to their own network, or to multiple networks, thus diversifying the search results available in P2P. What point would it serve if we only included a bunch of programs that connected solely to the Gnutella network? - all of the search results would be the same.
NOTE: Keep checking back at this page, we add new P2P File Sharing programs regularly! Although these programs are adware/spyware free, most of these applications are not considered P2P safe (i.e. “anonymous” or “encrypted traffic” type programs), unless they are properly configured via the Proxy (SOCKS) settings internally.
BitTorrent clients are not listed here, since there are only about three BT clients that should be used anyways (see here). Moreover, the BTclient is not at all indicative of good search queries - this quality is ordained by the BitTorrent website hosting the .torrent files.
See our Anonymous P2P Clients section for exclusively anonymous P2P clients & networks. See the bad P2P programs page for a list of clients that didn’t make the cut - and why.
Other things not included in the list below (categorized elsewhere):
- IRC Clients/Software
- DC/DC++/’Direct Connect‘ Clients
- Usenet Newsreaders
- BitTorrent Clients
- Anonymous P2P Programs
- P2P Programs that contain adware
- P2P Programs that charge money
- P2P Programs that don’t connect
- Friend-to-Friend Programs (F2F)
- Instant Messaging (IM) Software
- Darknets for File Sharing
- File/Web Hosting for File Sharing
THE P2P LIST
Allpeers for Firefox is a browser extension/addon that adds the ability to download *.torrent files through Firefox. And it’s fast, too!
Here’s the steps required to adding the allpeers Firefox extension:
1. Install Firefox, if you haven’t already done so.
2. Launch Firefox, go to TOOLS > Add-ons - this will open the extensions window. (as seen in the first screenshot below)
3. Click the “Get Extensions” button. This will launch Firefox to their extensions website. (see second screenshot)
4. In their search window, enter in “allpeers” and click search. This will show the available addon. Click the green INSTALL NOW button, and follow online instructions. After installation, Firefox will be restarted and will automatically launch to the Allpeers registration page. Enter a “username” and “password”. For the email address, it’s not important to enter a working one so make one up or use a hotmail address.
5. Visit your favorite BitTorrent website and start downloading some illegal files! What are you waiting for?!?
aMule is an eMule-like spinoff P2P client for the eD2k and Kademlia networks. When connected to the proper networks, there are loads of search results, millions of peers sharing files, and speeds are very impressive for popular queries.
Our Comments: aMule (and eMule) do not use the same ‘decentralized’ architecture as Limewire - they require connections to specific eD2k and KAD central servers that must be imported into the program. It has been estimated that 60% of all currently available eD2k servers are decoys/fakes or some form of scam. But don’t let this dissuade you entirely - eD2k is a great alternative to Gnutella (Limewire) - the emule/amule ‘Razorback’ server alone has almost 1 million users sharing 130 million files online at any given time. The secret is to import trusted server lists. More on that below…
Installation (of program): Download aMule from here, and install. The current file name is “aMule-2.1.3-installer.exe”. Read on…
Installation (of servers): There is one server list that comes pre-installed with aMule, but it doesn’t connect (a broken URL). Therefore if you try to connect/search right after installation, it won’t happen. You need to install some trusted server URLs. We’ve listed 3 verified trusted server lists (URLs) below which add approximately 75 working servers to aMule, with 6 million users between them. They are:
- http://peerates.net/peerates/trueservers.met
- http://peerates.net/peerates/certifiedservers.met
- http://www.gruk.org/server.met.gz
And there are more eD2k server lists around. Just be sure they’re trustworthy!
How to add the server lists into aMule:
1.Run aMule, and click on the “Networks” button at the top.
2.Now, enter one of the lines from above into the slot where it says ’servers’ - (i.e. - http://peerates.net/peerates/trueservers.met). See the screenshot below.
3.Last, click on the blue arrow to the left - this will update the servers.
4.Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each server URL as listed above. Congratulations, you’ll now be connected to many servers. (It may take a few minutes to establish a good connection).
Looking for other eMule options? There’s a plethora of modified eMule clients out there…check the SourceForge website.
Presently in Beta mode, only music searching is available, for now. Our Comments: We don’t want to be too hard on Fusteeno - it is brand-new and quite possibly an emergent breakthrough in the way files are shared! But, we found it a little slow. OK, a LOT slow, actually - some files wouldn’t connect, and some would just stop in the middle. The problem is there’s no way to configure it - so you don’t know if you’re downloading from one person or ten. Fusteeno connects to the Gnutella network.
Gnucleus is two things: One; a P2P application built for the windows platform. Two; it’s a ’source-code’ model for other P2P programs. We couldn’t get the application Gnucleus to connect, but there’s another program that uses the same Gnucleus source-code which does connect to the G1 and G2 networks - TruxShare v3.8.0.
MP3Rocket is another program based on the Limewire source code, but this program comes with a neat twist - it has an added tab for users to watch TV programs, listen to radio stations or play games while you wait for your downloads! We are impressed by this (especially since it also connects to the Gnutella network for great speeds). Having said that…
Caveat Emptor: There is a ‘Pro’ version of MP3Rocket which they thrust at you, and it costs $34.44 for a “Lifetime” membership. Lest we forget what happened to all those users who paid for a lifetime membership to 360SharePro last year? (another Limewire clone). It folded up shop, leaving everyone high and dry. Do not fall prey to the “Your money is now our money!” syndrome - use Addax P2P instead (it’s a free Limewire Pro clone with identical search results and download speeds).
Regardless, OFF sports some nice options, good speeds and decent search results. Download it here. (click ‘OFF System’ on that page). OFF connects to its own network (i.e…other OFF users).
ourTunes v1.3.3
Check out this story for more ourTunes information.
Our Notes: We aren’t sure what it really connects to - stats indicate a connection to Gnutella; yet there were only 900,000 users online - this suggests otherwise (or a limited Gnutella connection). Regardless, 900,000 users sharing 500 million files is still not too shabby for a P2P program.
At the time of this review, we had difficulties downloading the Phex install file from their website. Download it from the SourceForge page instead.
NOTE: There’s a spinoff application of Phex, called I2Phex which offers tunneling for anonymous downloads (i.e. ‘I2P over Phex’). See our review in the Anonymous P2P Clients section.
Speedy P2P Movie Finder v1.8
With WinMX, users have three options:
1. Visit the official WinMX website and start paying for your downloads. Not recommended.
2. Use an older version of WinMX and start connecting to some OpenNap networks. Recommended. See our link here about WinMX & OpenNap for that.
3. Use a patched version of WinMX (v3.53) to connect to the actual WinMX Peer Network. Highly recommended.
Option 3 - Patching WinMX with MXPie.info.
MXPie has come up with a way to patch a slightly older version of WinMX so that it connects with current users on the WinMX Peer network. We tested this and it works great; a search for ‘Metallica’ garnished 1,425 results!
Installation/patch:
MLDonkey v2.9.2 for Windows (P2P) + Sancho
MLDonkey is a very interesting piece of P2P software. It is a ‘core’ program that requires a secondary application to run the GUI (Graphical User Interface). For this we recommend ‘Sancho’, although others are available. We document MLDonkey and Sancho extensively because it is relatively complex to set up (for a P2P program), and because it runs on so many networks with many advanced options.
Installation:
Follow these steps carefully (reason below).
1. Download MLDonkey from here. Click the “Downloads” link to the left. The file for Windows is called “mldonkey-2.9.2.static.i386.Windows.exe”. After downloading, run it and there will be an extract to window. In this window, type “C:\mldonkey”. Proceed promptly to Step 2 (do not try to run MLDonkey).
2. Download ‘Sancho’ - available here. The file is “sancho-0.9.4-58-win32.exe”. After downloading, install it. Now, run Sancho from your START BUTTON and the second window will ask you for the location of the mlnet.exe file from the MLDonkey directory. Browse to, or type in this path as shown:
C:\mldonkey\mlnet.exe
Use the default settings in the Sancho window (port 127.0.0.1:4001). You may need to click the ‘connect’ button, or, if everything was a success, the GUI will launch and you’ll be in this Sancho window:
If you get an error message, either in the black ‘core’ window, or an error in a small window…”Core not found! 127.0.0.1:4001 does not accept connections…” then it’s likely that the path for ‘mlnet.exe’ is wrong, OR, you already have an instance of MLDonkey running in the background. Solution: check your MLDonkey/mlnet.exe path again, and/or CRTL+ALT+DEL and check that neither MLNET.EXE nor RUN_MLDONKEY.EXE are running tasks. Run Sancho from the Start Menu again. You may also have to uninstall/reinstall Sancho.
Operating Sancho/MLDonkey:
Sancho will automatically start connecting to the available servers (on the default networks). You can enable other protocols and networks (Direct Connect, Fast Track, Gnutella etc.) in TOOLS > PREFERENCES > ‘Networks’ tab:
Other MLDonkey options:
Change your download speed if you have a fast connection - the default is 50KB/s. Go to TOOLS > PREFERENCES > ‘Bandwidth’ tab, and enter “0″ for the “max_hard_download_rate” (this means ‘unlimited’). Also change your upload rate (use “50″ if you have Cable/DSL Internet access). Since there are so many networks within Sancho, some of them require uploading in order to download (BitTorrent, Direct Connect) so this isn’t a typical P2P program like Limewire where you can just shut it off. Turning off your uploads will adversely affect the file availability/download rate on some networks. Here’s a screenshot of the ‘bandwidth’ tab:
Filter your search results by number of users sharing the same file:
Sancho/MLDonkey has BitTorrent support so you can open .torrent files with it - but one setting MUST be changed immediately: The ports which are used for BitTorrent. They are set to 6882 and 6881 by default (really bad numbers for trackers and bandwidth throttling). These numbers should be changed to a range between 49152 to 65534. Since both the ‘client_port’ and the ‘tracker_port’ require different numbers to operate in Sancho, add a different number to both. To do this, go to TOOLS > PREFERENCES and click on the “+” button beside the ‘Networks’ tab, now click “BitTorrent” as shown:
Key Features of MLDonkey/Sancho:
SSH2/Tunneling support (go to TOOLS > HOST MANAGER to activate)
— In-program IRC (go to TOOLS > IRC Client to activate)
— Multiple networks/protocols: G1, G2, BitTorrent, DC, FastTrack, SoulSeek, etc.)
— Statistics window (download/upload rates)
— Great ‘Search Filtering’ (song bitrates, length etc.)
— …And too many more to mention!
The only true issue we have with MLDonkey is speed. Our top download speed was around 20KB/s (in the Donkey network). We didn’t test BitTorrent speeds.
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