GiFT
|
|
- The title of this article is incorrect because of technical limitations. The correct title is giFT.
This page is about the computer software giFT. For other uses, see gift (disambiguation)
giFT stands for giFT: Internet File Transfer. It is a daemon that is intended to act as a bridge to combine the capability of using several (peer-to-peer or otherwise) file sharing protocols for a simple GUI client. It uses the 'plugin' paradigm to dynamically load different protocols for a client as and when required. The currently supported networks include Gnutella, Ares Galaxy and OpenFT, giFT's own file sharing network. A FastTrack network (used by Kazaa) plugin is in beta, and an OpenNap plugin is in the works (see below for links).
A lightweight protocol is used by clients to communicate with the giFT process, allowing the protocol code to be completely abstracted from the user interface. There are already several GUI front-ends available for giFT for use under Windows, Macintosh, and Linux.
giFT has strong ties with its sibling project OpenFT, a peer-to-peer file sharing network protocol that incorporates the concept of 'search' nodes and 'index' supernodes in addition of common nodes. Supernodes is a concept that was first conceived in the proprietary FastTrack protocol currently used by Kazaa.
giFT was written using relatively cross-platform C code. At the time of this writing giFT 0.11.6 has been released--using an up-to-date version requires pulling the source code from CVS and compiling it manually.
According to the giFT documentation:
"Search nodes handle search requests. They search the filelists their CHILD (common) nodes submitted to them. These nodes must have a capable Internet connection and at least 128M RAM. A modern processor is highly recommended as well."
and
"INDEX nodes keep lists of available search nodes, collect statistics, and try to maintain the structure of the network."
giFT currently doesn't have unicode support included, so it's not possible to share files with characters such as "ø","ä", "å", "é", "è", "ó", "ö", "ù", "ü" in their names.
giFT applications
External links
- giFT can be found at http://gift.sourceforge.net/
- What is the giFT project? (http://gift.sourceforge.net/docs/?document=whatis.html)
- The giFT-FastTrack project page (http://developer.berlios.de/projects/gift-fasttrack/)
- The giFT-OpenNap project page (http://developer.berlios.de/projects/gift-opennap/)
- The giFT-Ares plugin website (http://developer.berlios.de/projects/gift-ares/)de:GiFT