Slyck reports on a major DirectConnect upgrade. DirectConnect hasn’t seen much interest from the press or technologists, but it does have a significant userbase, with 215,880 users currently online according to the Slyck home page, slightly smaller than Gnutella’s 234,618. I have no idea how Slyck obtains those numbers.
Anyhow, it is good to see that DirectConnect has adopted file hashing, specifically THEX (Tree Hash EXchange) using the Tiger hash. This allows DirectConnect clients to find exact alternate download sources and to verify downloads as they progress and opens to door to future MAGNET and Bitzi lookup support.
Here’s a MAGNET link that includes the tiger tree root (second component of the bitprint) and a corresponding Bitzi info lookup by urn:tree:tiger.
Jay-Z_Construction_Set.zip (631.9MB)
[…] DirectConnect increment[al download verification]: My lack of interest in Direct Connect (which seems still active) was indicative of a fetish for fully decentralized schemes (DC has distinct hubs and clients). Client-server (the web) has won, without even P2P downloading, which DC had, and THEX constituted an improvement to. Hash trees have found use in ever more applications, it just turns out that improved downloading of crap isn’t one of the significant ones. […]