Gnotella2 Set to Blow Up File Sharing

ZDNet is talking about Gnutella, and how its popularity seems to be on the decline as of late, after a huge surge in interest when all of Napsters problems began to happen. In the report, reporter Ben Charny sat down with J.C. Nicholas of GnutellaWorld to talk about the upcoming release of Gnotella, Gnotella2, and the impact it will have on the filesharing community.

Nicholas was so bold as to tell Charny he thinks Gnotella2 "is going to be one of the greatest revolutions since Linux. It will revolutionize the way we exchange information on the Internet." He also wrote that they are looking for an "earthquake" on the Internet to reshape the way the world views and uses the Internet.

How the software will accomplish this daring feat has yet to be seen, but several users are speculating on possible cures to the difficult nature in using Gnutella and its recent degradation in quality and speed.

First of all, the speed problems could be resolved by limiting the number of messages sent across the network, which, according to the ZDNet report, can take as much as 60% of the networks bandwidth. The next step involves creating "super peers" for slower computers that would serve as a proxy.

Nicholas also said his team is working on a Gnotella network that could support more than 20 million people, a much needed feature as the network becomes more and more clogged with users.

A new plugin currently being developed would also use spare hard drive space on computers connected to the network to turn the network as a whole into one amassed supercomputer. This is the same way SETI@Home works to analyze radar data in the search for extraterrestrial life.

There is no official word yet on when Gnotella2 will arrive on the P2P scene, but Nicholas told ZDNet it should be soon. The Sourceforge project page currently reports that the software is in its beta stages, but no testing software has been released.