Written by Alchemist (Eggxpert)
(Michael Haywood)
Since the internet’s introduction to the public, the problem has always been how to move files from one person to another – whether that file is a document, music, video, or application. The files that used to take days now take seconds. It seems no matter what speeds our Internet Service Providers give us, we find a way to use up all the available bandwidth.
Here is a brief look back to where we started and where we are going.
BBS – Bulletin Board Systems were the main way files were transferred in the beginning. Users would use modems to dial in (Telnet) to private or public BBS across the country.
BBS hosts a wide variety of files but, due to dial up modem speeds, many files were simply too large to transfer.
During off peak times, BBS would connect to other BBS across the county to transfer e-mail and files. Most downloads of this time were limited to documents, photos, and small .wav files. When the internet began to take off, BBS slowly died and were no longer maintained. A few BBS are still kept up and running for posterity and keeping the old tradition alive.
IRC – Internet Relay Chat started out as just that, a chat program for users to communicate across the world. It was not until IRC applications began to include a DCC (Direct Client to Client) protocol that file sharing began to take over IRC. Soon after, users began writing and sharing scripts that ran an “F-serv”, short for file servers.
F-serv’s scripts gave remote users access to the files that were shared and the ability to download them. The file size was still limited due to dial up modem being the primary connection but isdn was becoming more popular. As speeds increased, so did the file sizes. Small videos and large resolutions photos were being made available along with the music mp3 to some degree. While IRC is still popular for chat, its days of hosting files are gone.
Direct Connect – Direct Connect (later known as DC++) was like IRC with a really nice graphical interface. Instead of using dos like commands to download files, users could connect and download files with just a few clicks. With cable modems and dsl, files sizes continued to grow larger and larger.
Entire music cds in mp3 and full length movies in lossy compression like divx could be downloaded by users in only a few hours. However, Direct Connect’s great features and limitless networks were its biggest flaw. Since many networks could not communicate with each other, users would spend hours looking for a server that even had the file they wanted. Several networks eventually added cross searches but it was still a little too late.
Kazaa – Kazaa and hacked version K-Lite was either one of the best or worst things that ever hit the MPAA and RIAA, depending on how you look at it. For the first time, users had fast connections and a program that allowed the almost limitless downloading of any photo, video, or music that they could think of. Full songs in high quality mp3 could be downloaded in under 10 seconds and burned to a CD. Users no longer had to pay $20 for a CD with the one song they wanted to hear.
Millions of users around the world connected to the network, sharing their files and downloading others. As the rate of usage increased, Kazaa’s parent company began to add spyware into the program to help turn a profit. As users began to notice, K-Lite was created by a group of people who cracked the code of Kazaa’s program.
Artists’ profits fell, and the RIAA fought back by suing Kazaa’s parent company.
Attempts were made to save the company, using up all the revenue created by the ad sales through the client program. Their efforts failed in the end, but this conflict did force the music companies to rethink their price structure and offer users online purchase of songs for a reasonable fee.
Although the official network has been shut down for more than a year, the network is still alive in the form of user networks to a very limited degree.
Bittorrent – Anyone that has been on the net in the last year has been exposed to the torrent file. Torrents are everywhere. Unlike file sharing in the past, users need to install a small program that does noting until you download a small torrent file. That little file contains all the information needed to connect to the proper server and search for users who are hosting and downloading the file. Thanks to the combination of internet connection speeds approaching 15Mbps in some areas and huge terabyte hard drives, the problem has turned from how to download it to how to store all this data.
So where does this leave us to go? Who knows!
Now that networks are beginning to offer television shows online for free viewing, movie rental companies offering streaming media direct to the television, and cable companies increasing on demand type channels, users having to download files might become a thing of the past. One thing remains true, though: people want to view media – just not pay a whole week’s check to see a movie or save two weeks to buy a cd.
E-Mail
Alchemists@hotmail.com