Napster and Gnutella are two types of file sharing systems. Both file sharing systems have many advantages particularly their ability to increase available bandwidth and disk space through the creation of mini-servers off of member computers.

Napster

Napster was the pioneer of the concept of peer-to-peer file sharing where computer hard drives became mini-servers. This allowed files to be shared directly from one computer to another.

Upon activation of the old Napster program and upon log on to the site, a computer becomes a server and the files stored in it become available to other users also currently logged on. The computer connects to the Napster’s central servers and informs it of the files it has available for sharing. These files are added to the central server’s list of every shared song within the Napster network.

In the old Napster, a song title query can be made by any member computer. Once such a query is made, the Napster’s central server returns a list of all connected computers that have the song. The computer from which the query originated then connects directly to the source machine for the download.

The billions of free songs available for download attracted millions of users. However, Napster was eventually banned because of numerous copyright issues. The site was closed by killing the central Napster database.

Gnutella

Gnutella uses the same basic principles as the old Napster program. Like the old Napster, Gnutella makes use of the hard drives of the connected computers to provide the list of available files. Member computers use Gnutella software to connect to the network.

There are copyright issues associated with Gnutella. However, its peer-to-peer file sharing system does not require a central database or a single application which runs on the program. Without a central database, law enforcers and the courts do not have a physical site to attack. The only other option left is to block Gnutella traffic through the ISP and base levels of the internet.

The Gnutella system of file sharing, however, also has disadvantages as compared to the old Napster system. Because the Gnutella system does not have a central database connecting all the computers in the network, it does its search through networking with other computers directly connected to it and passes down the query to other computers connected in series with the first.

This type of connection is quite slow and it will take a lot of time for the file sharing system is to cover all the computers in the network. Thus every query also has its own Time to Live or TTL limit. This means that a user’s request can only propagate up to six or seven levels into the network before the query is terminated. This gives a maximum limit of about 8,000 computers through which the computer that made the query can search for the particular song it wants to download. This is rather limited when compared to the millions of options it had with the old Napster program.