Gnutella2

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Gnutella2, often referred to as G2, is a peer-to-peer protocol developed mainly by Michael Stokes and released in 2002. While inspired by the gnutella protocol, G2 shares little of its design with the exception of its connection handshake and download mechanics.^[1] It adopts an extensible binary packet format and an entirely new search algorithm. Furthermore, it has a slightly different network topology and an improved metadata system which helps effectively to reduce fake files, viruses (etc.) on the network.

History

In November 2002, Michael Stokes announced the Gnutella2 protocol to the Gnutella Developers Forum. While some thought the goals stated for Gnutella2, primarily to make a clean break with the gnutella 0.6 protocol and start over so that some of gnutella's less clean parts would be done more elegantly, to be impressive and desirable, other developers, primarily those of LimeWire and BearShare, thought it a "cheap publicity stunt" and discounted technical merits. Many still refuse to refer to the network as "Gnutella2" and instead refer to it as "Mike's Protocol" ("MP").^[2]

The Gnutella2 protocol still uses the old "GNUTELLA CONNECT/0.6" handshake string for its connections^[1] as defined in the gnutella 0.6 specifications, which was criticized by the GDF as an attempt to use the gnutella network for bootstrapping the new, unrelated network, while proponents of the network claimed that its intent was to remain backwards-compatible with gnutella to allow current gnutella clients to add Gnutella2 at their leisure.

With the developers entrenched in their positions, a flame war soon erupted, further cementing both sides' resolve.^[3][4][5][6]

The draft specifications were released on March 26, 2003, and more detailed specifications soon followed. G2 is not supported by many of the "old" gnutella network clients, however many Gnutella2 clients still also connect to gnutella. Many Gnutella2 proponents claim that this is because of political reasons, while gnutella supporters claim that the drastic changes don't have enough merit to outweigh the cost of deep rewrites.^[7]

Design

Gnutella2 divides nodes into two groups: Leaves and Hubs. Most Leaves maintain two connections to Hubs,^[8] while Hubs accept hundreds of Leaf connections, and an average of 7 connections to other Hubs. When a search is initiated, the node obtains a list of Hubs if needed, and contacts the Hubs in the list, noting which have been searched, until the list is exhausted, or a predefined search limit has been reached. This allows a user to find a popular file easily without loading the network, while theoretically maintaining the ability for a user to find a single file located anywhere on the network.

Hubs index what files a Leaf has by means of a Query Routing Table, which is filled with single bit entries of hashes of keywords which the Leaf uploads to the Hub, and which the Hub then combines with all the hash tables its Leaves have sent it in order to create a version to send to their neighbouring Hubs. This allows for Hubs to reduce bandwidth greatly by simply not forwarding queries to Leaves and neighbouring Hubs if the entries which match the search are not found in the routing tables.

Gnutella2 relies extensively on UDP, rather than TCP, for searches. The overhead of setting up a TCP connection would make a random walk search system, requiring the contacting of large numbers of nodes with small volumes of data, unworkable. However, UDP is not without its own drawbacks. Because UDP is connectionless, there is no standard method to inform the sending client that a message was received, and so if the packet is lost, there is no way to know. Because of this, UDP packets in Gnutella2 have a flag to enable a reliability setting. When an UDP packet with enabled reliability flag is received, the client will respond with an acknowledge packet to inform the sending client that their packet arrived at its destination. If the acknowledge packet is not sent, the reliable packet will be retransmitted in an attempt to ensure delivery. Low importance packets which do not have the flag enabled do not require an acknowledge packet, reducing reliability, but also reducing overhead as no acknowledge packet needs to be sent.

Protocol features

Gnutella2 has an extensible binary packet format, comparable to an XML document tree, which was conceived as an answer for some of gnutella's less elegant parts. The packet format was designed so that future network improvements and individual vendor features could be added without worry of causing bugs in other clients on the network.^[9]

For file identification and secure integrity check of files it employs SHA-1 hashes. To allow for a file to be reliably downloaded in parallel from multiple sources as well as to allow for the reliable uploading of parts as the file is being downloaded (swarming), Tiger tree hashes are used.^[10]

To create a more robust and complete system for searching, Gnutella2 also has a metadata system for more complete labeling, rating, and quality information to be given in the search results than would simply be gathered by the file names.^[11] Nodes can even share this information after they have deleted the file, allowing users to mark viruses and worms on the network without requiring them to keep a copy.

Gnutella2 also utilizes compression in its network connections to reduce the bandwidth used by the network.^[10]

Shareaza has the additional feature to request previews of images and videos, though currently no additional clients take advantage of this.

Differences from gnutella

Overall, the two networks are fairly similar, with the primary differences being in the packet format and the search methodology.

Protocol

Gnutella's packet format has been criticized because it was not originally designed with extensibility in mind, and has had many additions over the years, leaving the packet structure cluttered and inefficient.^[12] Gnutella2 learned from this, and aside from having many of the added features of gnutella standard in Gnutella2, designed in future extensibility from the start.

Search algorithm

While gnutella uses a query flooding method of searching, Gnutella2 uses a walk system where a searching node gathers a list of Hubs and contacts them directly, one at a time. However, as Hub organize themselves in so called "Hub clusters", where each Hub mirrors the information stored by its neighbours, the Leaf is returned the information of the entire Hub cluster (usually 7 Hubs). This has several advantages over the gnutella's query flooding system. It is more efficient, as continuing a search does not increase the network traffic exponentially, queries are not routed through as many nodes, and it increases the granularity of a search, allowing a client to stop once a pre-defined threshold of results has been obtained more effectively than in gnutella. However, the walk system also increases the complexity of the network and the network maintenance required, as well as requiring safeguards to prevent a malicious attacker from using the network for denial-of-service attacks.

Terminology

There is also a difference in terminology: while the more capable nodes which are used to condense the network are referred to as Ultrapeers in gnutella, they are called Hubs in Gnutella2, and they are also used slightly differently in topology. In gnutella, the Ultrapeers generally maintain as many leaves as peer connections, while Gnutella2 Hubs maintain far more leaves, and fewer peer (Hub-to-Hub) connections. The reason for this is that the search methods of the various networks have different optimum topologies.

Clients

List

Free software Gnutella2 clients include:

• Adagio (Cross Platform), written in Ada, under the GPL.
• Gnucleus (Windows), written in C/C++, under the LGPL
• MLDonkey (Cross Platform), written in Ocaml, under the GPL, however as of version 2.9.0, support is officially unmaintained and disabled in the binaries.
• Shareaza (Windows), multi-network, written in C++, under the GPL, currently +/- 93% network share^[13]
• Sharelin (Cross platform), written in C++, web-GUI
• G2CD (Linux/Unix/BSD) Hub mode only implementation of the Gnutella2 network.
• Quazaa (Cross platform) written in C++/QT4, under GPLv3. New client inspired by Shareaza.

Proprietary software implementations include:

• Foxy (Windows) Chinese GnucDNA-derived program, no interaction with any other G2 clients possible,^[14] free.
• Kiwi Alpha (Windows)
• Morpheus (Windows)
• TrustyFiles (Windows)

Comparison

The following table compares general and technical information for a number of available applications supporting the G2 network.

client	Chat[15]	Handles big files (>4 GB)	UKHL	Unicode	UPnP port mapping[16]	NAT traversal	Remote preview[17]	Ability to search with hashes	Hub modus	Spyware/ Adware/ Malware-free	Other networks	Based on	OS	Other
Adagio	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	No	Yes	N/A	-	Cross-platform	-
Foxy	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes	Foxy only[18]	No	N/A	GnucDNA	Cross-platform	GPL violator
FileScope	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	gnutella, eD2k, OpenNap	-	Cross-platform[19]	-
Gnucleus	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	No	Yes	gnutella	GnucDNA	Windows	-
Kiwi Alpha	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	No	No	gnutella	GnucDNA	Windows	-
MLdonkey	Currently no official support for the Gnutella2 plugin. Searching for new maintainer for this plugin.											-	Cross-platform	[20]
Morpheus	Yes	No	No	No	Yes	No	No	Yes	No	No	gnutella, NEOnet	GnucDNA	Windows	Development and hosting of the client has been stopped
Shareaza	Yes	Yes	Yes[21]	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	gnutella, eD2k, BitTorrent	-	Windows	Includes IRC support
Sharelin	No	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No	Yes	No	Yes	N/A	-	Unix/Linux	Console application with WEB-GUI
TrustyFiles	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	No	removable in commercial version ($29)	eD2k, Overnet, BitTorrent, gnutella	GnucDNA (partial)	Windows	-

See also

• GnucDNA
• Shareaza

References

1. ^ ^{a b} "Developer discussion of similarities between Gnutella and Gnutella2". The Gnutella Developer Forum. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_gdf/message/15113. Retrieved 2006-05-10. 
2. ^ "GDF Discussion on the Gnutella2 name". The Gnutella Developer Forum. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_gdf/message/11933. Retrieved 2006-05-10. 
3. ^ "Part of the Gnutella/Gnutella2 Flame War (1)". The Gnutella Developer Forum. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_gdf/message/13932. Retrieved 2006-08-06. 
4. ^ "Part of the Gnutella/Gnutella2 Flame War (2)". The Gnutella Developer Forum. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_gdf/message/13942. Retrieved 2006-08-06. 
5. ^ "Part of the Gnutella/Gnutella2 Flame War (3)". The Gnutella Developer Forum. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_gdf/message/13946. Retrieved 2006-08-06. 
6. ^ "Part of the Gnutella/Gnutella2 Flame War (4)". The Gnutella Developer Forum. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_gdf/message/13950. Retrieved 2006-08-06. 
7. ^ "Developer discussion on migration to Gnutella2". The Gnutella Developer Forum. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_gdf/message/11921. Retrieved 2006-05-10. 
8. ^ "Gnutella2 Network history". Gnutella2 Crawler g2paranha. http://crawler.trillinux.org/history.html. Retrieved 2009-04-12. 
9. ^ "Packet Structure". Gnutella2 Wiki. http://g2.trillinux.org/index.php?title=Packet_Structure. Retrieved 2007-11-07. 
10. ^ ^{a b} "Gnutella2 Standard". Gnutella2 wiki. http://g2.trillinux.org/index.php?title=Gnutella2_Standard. Retrieved 2007-11-07. 
11. ^ "Simple Query Language and Metadata". Gnutella2 Wiki. http://g2.trillinux.org/index.php?title=Simple_Query_Language_and_Metadata. Retrieved 2007-11-07. 
12. ^ "Developer discussion of Gnutella and Gnutella2 packet formats". The Gnutella Developer Forum. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_gdf/message/16290. Retrieved 2006-05-15. 
13. ^ "Shareaza network share on the G2 network". Trillinux crawler (G2paranha). http://crawler.trillinux.org/versions.html. Retrieved 2008-09-18. 
14. ^ Uses its own "Foxy"-Network, which is half-poorly separated from the original G2 and known for network leakage into G2^{[citation needed]}. Theoretically, the client is compatible to G2.
15. ^ It refers to client to client chat.
16. ^ Automatically configure port forwarding (requires Router with UPnP support)
17. ^ From searches and from downloads.
18. ^ Foxy Hubs are not compatible with any other Gnutella2 software and can only be connected by Foxy leaves.
19. ^ For testing purposes only Windows mode enabled in current version.
20. ^ gnutella and Gnutella2 plugins still available for downloading.
21. ^ Since version 2.2.4.0

External links

• Gnutella2 wiki
• g2paranha - G2 Network Crawler