However, in First Among Equals, Will Knight says that Gnutella is making moves towards more of a Napster-like syatem, using reflectors or proxy servers to provide resources for users with slow connections and not allowing them to act as servers. Many people have suspected that if Napster shuts down, its users would automatically turn to Gnutella to find their music. It also provides search results for files, links, graphics, and advertisements. Gnutella can help you find anything you want, such as the latest software downloads, audio samples, and movies. This is the reason why Gnutella can help you. What makes Gnutella so great? Even with audio software programs like Napster, SpinFrenzy, and CuteMX, you aren't always able to find what you're looking for. The transient Web has the potential to be every bit as disruptive as the conventional 'permanent' Web, and possibly more so. Nonetheless, this simple and idiosyncratic protocol is currently in the vanguard of the emergence of the transient Web. It's far from a complete solution, and alternative systems may eclipse it. In Gnutella and the Transient Web, Kelly Truelove says that: The Gnutella protocol restores the Web's original symmetry, enabling even transient computers to effectively participate as servers. Gnutella software is composed of a mini search engine combined with a file system. Users act both as clients and as servers, creating a peer-to-peer network that allows information and files to be shared and found through a non-centralized system. Instead of connecting to a central server, Internet users connect themselves to other Internet users. Users connect to other users and not to a central server.

They designed it in hopes of creating a purer peer-to-peer network.

Originally created by Tom Pepper and Justin Frankel at Nullsoft, Gnutella is a protocol that allows Internet file and information sharing in a decentralized system. Gnutella File Sharing - open source, Napster, free riding, cooperation, P2P, peer-to-peer, Tragedy of the Commons, freeloading Gnutella File Sharing by Moya K.

Gnutella 2 clients