GiFT

giFT stands for giFT: Internet File Transfer. It is a daemon that is intended to act as a bridge to combine the capability of using several (peer-to-peer or otherwise) file sharing protocols for a simple GUI client. It uses the 'plugin' paradigm to dynamically load different protocols for a client as and when required. The currently supported networks include Gnutella and OpenFT[?], giFT's own file sharing network. A FastTrack network (used by Kazaa) plugin is also in the works (see below for link.)

A lightweight protocol is used by clients to communicate with the giFT process, allowing the protocol code to be completely abstracted from the user interface. There are already several GUI front-ends available for giFT for use under both Windows and Linux.

giFT has strong ties with its sibling project OpenFT, a peer-to-peer file sharing network protocol that incorporates the concept of 'search' nodes and 'index' supernodes in addition of common nodes. Supernodes is a concept that was first conceived in the proprietory FastTrack protocol currently used by Kazaa.

giFT was written using relatively cross-platform C code. At the time of this writing all of the prebuilt downloads are obsolete -- using an up-to-date version requires pulling the source code from CVS and compiling it manually.

According to the giFT documentation:

"Search nodes handle search requests. They search the filelists their CHILD (common) nodes submitted to them. These nodes must have a capable Internet connection and at least 128M RAM. A modern processor is highly recommended as well"

and

"INDEX nodes keep lists of available search nodes, collect statistics, and try to maintain the structure of the network."

External Links

• giFT can be found at http://gift.sourceforge.net/
• What is the giFT project? (http://gift.sourceforge.net/docs/?document=whatis)
• The giFT-FastTrack project page (http://developer.berlios.de/projects/gift-fasttrack/)