There are now many technologies for P2P file sharing:
- Usenet
- Bittorrent
- IPFS
- Tenfinger
- more?
And also several technologies for anonymization:
- VPNs
- Tor
- I2P
AFAICT the most popular option is still Bittorrent with various public and private trackers and indexers. Private trackers seem to be the most effective option that communities have converged on.
I’ve tried all of the above solutions over the years and while I think something like I2P sounds great in theory, it doesn’t seem to actually work well in practice. Because it’s not terribly popular, it’s hard to know what to expect.
We clearly still haven’t found the ideal model that can provide both good performance, discovery, access, availability, and anonymity. But do you think we will actually make progress on these problems? We seem to have stabilized on a local maximum.
Dead drops.
BitTorrent, IPFS, and maybe some airdrop standard like thing.
You included memes (IPFS), and omitted important shit (DC, original Freenet), not to mention some old networks (ed2k, gnutella/G2) that went out of fashion, but are not fully extinct.
As for the future, the situation could get grim at a much lower level, as both the “file” as an ubiquitously accessible unit, and desktop computers in general as ubiquitously available and affordable hardware, are both under threat, with the latter already affected by the semi-fake partial (for now) scarcity supposedly fully caused by the AI craze.
Computers are probably going to hang around for a while. Just get out of the mindset that you necessarily need a brand new computer.
supposedly fully caused by the AI craze.
The silicon cartel. Gotta assign blame to the ones who dug this hole and not paint them as heroes or worse, a neutral party. They made this mess
I miss audio galaxy
That was my first too. But WinMX was more relevant and lasted much longer.
Usenet is client-server, not P2P.
The issue with “good performance” on P2P systems is that you’re reliant on other users’ bandwidth, and there’s a lot of people in the world that have slow upload speeds. Some users use a seedbox with a fast datacenter-grade 10Gbps or 40Gbps connection, but it’s not common.
The obvious approach if you want to download something from people with slow connections is to download parts of the same files from a lot of them in parallel, which is exactly what BitTorrent does. That’s good enough for plenty of use cases, which is why BitTorrent has been around for so long. The protocol is designed pretty well for this use case.
It’s got plenty of legit use cases too, especially in research (where it’s common to have data files that are tens or hundreds of gigabytes and need to be shared with other researchers) and in gaming (where it was common to use BitTorrent to download updates, at least outside of Steam).
usenet is p2p: server p2p. The servers share the articles between themselves in a p2p manner
That’s not what P2P means though. With Usenet, the articles are stored on a server, and you download them from the server. P2P always means one peer directly connects to another. The reason P2P systems exist is that they avoid things like takedowns (since you’d need to take down every user instead of a central server), and Usenet doesn’t have that advantage.
If Usenet is P2P, then every other system that lets people upload files is P2P, including things like Rapidshare, Google Drive, forums, etc. That wouldn’t make sense.
then every other system that lets people upload files is P2P, including things like Rapidshare, Google Drive, forums, etc. That wouldn’t make sense.
P2P means peer to peer.
Here you have a graphical description of usenet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet#/media/File:Usenet_servers_and_clients.svg
From wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet
When a user posts an article, it is initially only available on that user’s news server. Each news server talks to one or more other servers (its “newsfeeds”) and exchanges articles with them. In this fashion, the article is copied from server to server and should eventually reach every server in the network
Please pay attention to: Each news server talks to one or more other servers (its “newsfeeds”) and exchanges articles with them.
hmmm… it sounds like p2p.
Here you have the fucking RFC for the command to share articles between servers: https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3977/#section-6.3.2
Even if you check the article headers you can see the path the article it took to reach to you. If the article wasn’t uploaded to your server, you can see that some articles that you are downloading came from different servers until it reached your server.
Tell me, if rapidshare, mega, google drive, etc works like this. Well i don’t think so, because first you don’t even have different servers from different providers… You just have their servers, so they can’t share shit with anybody else’s servers.
It’s not p2p for the enduser, but that’s why i said it was server p2p.
OR maybe you operated a NNTP server with only 1 feed? (which i doubt).
The reason P2P systems exist is that they avoid things like takedowns (since you’d need to take down every user instead of a central server), and Usenet doesn’t have that advantage.
If you had used usenet before obfuscation took place, you could see that some articles where removed from some server but still available on another ones. That’s why there was a rule of having servers from different backbones https://cdn.rexum.space/usenet/Usenet Providers and Backbones (Version 2025-06-30).svg
Please pay attention to: Each news server talks to one or more other servers (its “newsfeeds”) and exchanges articles with them.
hmmm… it sounds like p2p.
This is describing federation and decentralization, not P2P. The servers communicate with each other. P2P is when users communicate directly.
Would you consider Lemmy or email as P2P? They’re also federated and decentralized.
It’s not p2p for the enduser, but that’s why i said it was server p2p.
Your definition of “server P2P” doesn’t really make sense. Any CDN would fit this definition for example, because CDN edge servers fill data from origin servers when it’s not cached locally, and a lot of that data would be user-uploaded, but I’m not sure anyone would describe Akamai, Fastly, or Cloudflare as P2P.
Usenet has companies running the servers, and you download from and upload to the company’s servers. Nobody would reasonably describe that as P2P, regardless of how the servers are implemented.
P2P is when users communicate directly.
P2P means peer to peer!
Definition of peer:
2. countable noun Your peers are the people who are the same age as you or who have the same status as you. His engaging personality made him popular with his peers. Synonyms: equal, like, match, fellow [old-fashioned] More Synonyms of peer“The same status” , Synonyms: equal.
This is describing federation and decentralization, not P2P.
It’s very similar but not the same. Using lemmy as example, when i request posts from another server, my server will request only those posts. It won’t request everything. Do you see the difference?
A CDN is centralized in control but distributed in delivery: one content owner controls the authoritative data, while a CDN operator replicates it across its infrastructure. In p2p nobody controls the authoritative data - if one peer refuses to distribute the data, my server can still get the data from another feed.
Both federation or CDNs don’t work in a P2P manner. They either have selective replication and/or centralized control.
Usenet has companies running the servers, and you download from and upload to the company’s servers.
Again this has nothing to do with being server p2p or not. And btw, stop moving the goal posts.
EDIT: because i have more than to do than keep replying to this. Here is the output of perplexity. Check the references. Maybe it will be enough for you:
Yes, Usenet newsgroup servers do share articles directly with one another in a peer-like fashion, and many technical descriptions characterize the server layer as having a “peer-to-peer character.” However, whether the whole system is accurately described as “P2P” depends on which layer you mean (servers vs end users) and how strictly you define P2P. ## How Usenet servers exchange articles Usenet is built on a distributed network of news servers that exchange articles using the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP). Key points: - Each news server connects to one or more other servers (its “newsfeeds”) and exchanges articles with them. [en.wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_server) - When a user posts an article, it first lands on their local server; that server then forwards it to its peers, which forward it further, propagating copies across the network. [alchetron](https://alchetron.com/Usenet) - Servers use feed commands like `IHAVE`/`SENDME` to tell each other which articles they have or want, effectively coordinating replication without a single central master. [bestreviews](https://bestreviews.net/usenet-glossary/) This server-to-server replication is inherently decentralized: there is no single authoritative Usenet server; instead, there is a changing mesh of servers that mutually share content. [en.wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_server) ## Is this “P2P”? There are two common perspectives: ### 1. Server layer: yes, it has P2P characteristics Many sources explicitly describe the collection of Usenet servers as having a peer-to-peer character: - “The collection of Usenet servers has thus a certain peer-to-peer character in that they share resources by exchanging them…” [alchetron](https://alchetron.com/Usenet) - Some academic and technical discussions even call Usenet “perhaps the oldest and most successful P2P application,” focusing on the distributed, symmetric exchange of articles among hosts. [csd.uoc](https://www.csd.uoc.gr/~hy554/papers/iptps2004.pdf) - NNTP-based newsfeeds are symmetric in the sense that each participating server can both send and receive articles from its peers. [en.wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_server) In this sense, the **server overlay** behaves like a P2P network: nodes (servers) are peers that both provide and consume content, and there’s no single central repository. ### 2. End-user layer: mostly client–server, not classic P2P For typical end users, Usenet looks more like a client–server system: - Users run a newsreader (client) that connects to a news server and downloads or uploads articles via NNTP. [alchetron](https://alchetron.com/Usenet) - Downloaders are not directly connected to other users; they only talk to their provider’s server, unlike BitTorrent or Gnutella where peers connect directly to many other peers. [alchetron](https://alchetron.com/Usenet) - The identity and address of downloaders are hidden from other users; only the server knows who is connecting. [alchetron](https://alchetron.com/Usenet) Because of this, some analyses distinguish Usenet from “modern P2P services,” noting that: - Content distribution among servers is P2P-like, but - User access is via client–server, and the granularity/symmetry differs from file-sharing P2P networks. [alchetron](https://alchetron.com/Usenet) ## So can it be described as P2P? - **Technically accurate**: “Usenet’s server network has a peer-to-peer architecture” or “Usenet uses a P2P-like server overlay.” [alchetron](https://alchetron.com/Usenet) - **Potentially misleading without qualification**: Calling the whole Usenet experience “P2P” in the same sense as BitTorrent or Napster can confuse people, because end users don’t directly share with each other; they share via intermediate servers. [alchetron](https://alchetron.com/Usenet) A precise description is: Usenet is a **distributed system** where **servers peer with each other** to replicate articles (P2P at the server layer), while **users interact in a client–server manner** with their chosen news provider. [en.wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_server)
Reading through the docs about it here, it sounds like it’s only an indexer, not a tracker.
BitTorrent is a good middle ground between decentralization, adoption and user-friendliness. I think the transport layer is pretty solid, and there’s no need to stick an anonymity layer at the protocol level, as the preferred method might change over time.
Combined with a VPN to handle the anonymity part, I think it’s solid and modular enough.
I agree the transport layer is good and having anonymity in a different layer works. I think my main gripes with it today are:
- Anonymity is paid for and trust-based. It’d be awesome if something like I2P started working well enough that anyone could have anonymity for free without needing to trust a company or worry about poor performance.
- Private trackers. While I understand the logic behind this form of community (incentivize seeding and make bans meaningful), I think it’s possible to solve those problems with a public tracker. I have ideas on how this could work if anyone is interested.
I try alternatives but keep returning to ‘old fashioned’ BT + VPN.
Bittorrent is peak filesharing technology.
When you share medium sizes Torrents yes. But too many small files or a bit collection and I think something like soul seek or ipfs wins. The problem with bittorrent is that is not file centered
SoulSeek? Its like old limewire; dangerous and also full of really kind people too.
Nicotine+ is a client.
I think a combination of Soulseek and bittorrent, so you can share your library in the file structure you want, then collectively seed files with the same hash.
is it like emule ?
so you can share your library in the file structure you want, then collectively seed files with the same hash.
So… … … emule and gnutella? Both have DHT and that’s how they work…
Cool what client would you recommend?
It’s a bit suspicious to recommend two protocols as I question if you use it yourself or just looked it up.
well gnutella is almost dead, the only usable client is gtk-gnutella https://sourceforge.net/projects/gtk-gnutella/, but there’s not enough users. You might be lucky if you find anything you want.
For ed2k, you have amule https://github.com/amule-org/amule/releases/tag/3.1.0 . This network still has around 100k users (a drop in the number of torrent total users - but it’s around the same number of users of soulseek) but you can still find lots of stuff there. Lately the amule client has been improving and improving and currently it’s the best client for ed2k - my opinion.
For you to have high id you need to have 2 ports open, and some vpn don’t allow that. They only allow one port. With ed2k you can search the network (imagine like searching directly the bittorrent DHT), or you can use any ed2k link sharing community to get the stuff you want - this way is safer
It’s a bit suspicious to recommend two protocols as I question if you use it yourself or just looked it up.
Well, i’m old enough to have used almost everything. And i like to know how stuff works.
I tried amule and it is technically better than soulseek but the client is not as friendly.
This one particularly is pretty sketchy where bold and colour define if it is shared or not. I’m currently not certain if I’m sharing my root dir recursively or not, I’ll come back once they’ve improved it.
Awesome that you opened a github ticket. Most people just complain on forums/reddit/lemmy.
And yes i agree with you, there are some stuff that can be more user friendly and less confusing.
I didn’t make that issue sorry, but hey you aren’t using Gnutella so even? xD
I haven’t tried SoulSeek. What does it do better than Bittorrent?
EDIT: After playing around with SoulSeek, it seems pretty cool, although the amount of time it takes to scan your files on startup is laughably bad.
It’s like Napster or Limewire if you ever used them. You download files directly from individual users. You can also browse all of a user’s shared files.
It requires inbound connectivity to work well, so you’ll have to ensure your VPN supports port forwarding. The VPN that’s usually recommended for Soulseek (and torrenting) is AirVPN.
Do people not recommend PIA anymore? I’ve used it for a long time and never had issues. Supports port forwarding. Audits have shown they don’t store activity logs, and they even run RAM-only servers.
EDIT: Just looked at AirVPN. It’s nice they don’t request any identifying info on signup.
In older versions of Soulseek, you had to have two consecutive port numbers (eg. 20000 and 20001, or 12345 and 12346, etc). AirVPN was the only VPN that let you pick the port numbers, so you could guarantee getting two consecutive ports.
I don’t think modern Soulseek clients require that any more (slskd only requires one port as far as I can tell) so it’s not important any more, but AirVPN is still the most recommended by Soulseek users.
Private Internet Access only give you a single forwarded port, so you couldn’t use it for both torrents and Soulseek at the same time (for example). AirVPN used to provide 20, but I think they reduced it to 5 for new accounts.
AirVPN’s forwarded ports are also not server-specific; you get your chosen ports regardless of which server you use.
PIA is owned by Israel. https://hackread.com/private-internet-access-pia-vpn-sold-israel-privacy-concerns/
Well fuck me. I mean I don’t think that’s an immediate issue for me but that does suck.
EDIT: Although if we’re being honest, has PIA been found doing anything shady in the 7 years since they were acquired?
Being owned by Israel is the shady thing, I assume anything owned by Israel to be compromised and to have a backdoor. Same as I would any technology owned by the 4 eyes.
Soukseek is great, I recently discovered people sharing also movies and other stuff, so not only music which is what is famous for. You can also ban Israel from your sharing!
It’s more like (old) Facebook where you make your media folder available to download, add buddies so you can check out their library later, thank them using the in built chat.
Just use a vpn with a port. And don’t add identifiable stuff to share.
Wait since when have you had to use a VPN with soulseek? I’ve never done that and I live in the states.
You don’t need to. But it’s probably a good idea for the same reason as with BitTorrent.
Really great explanation. I’ve always thought about giving it a go but haven’t tried yet.
I guess anything too convenient is bound to be attacked by lawyers.
Yeah, of it either becomes too popular or too conventient, then it MUST be destroyed! :(
Ive trued private trackers, but there is very little for me to try and keep up the ratio them while on public my share ratio is well above 5.
Public trackers and no vpn gets it done
I’m on IP torrents. It’s 2 weeks or 1:1 health. And you get points just for seeding. I have my client auto delete after 3 weeks. And I can just zap stuff I don’t want with points. It’s so low management when I’m downloading stuff that’s newly releasing. I hardly ever login to the site anymore with my *arr setup.
Public trackers never seem to have as good of releases or swarm health, except for the most popular content.
see, I don’t really do popular (except for the kids) and private trackers just seemed like too much hard work
They’re certainly an imperfect solution, downloading shit you don’t care about just to build ratio, at least at first, seems really stupid.
But you can’t argue with the quality of the content on good private trackers.
Most private trackers have a point system where you accumulate points that you can exchange for upload credit, as a mean to provide an incentive to keep less popular torrents active.
That way you can build up your ratio without downloading stuff you don’t want.
Yeah I’m in multiple private ones, I know how it works, it’s still not easy
Keep seeding and your ratio goes up, even if people aren’t downloading the file.
Or, donate to the site.
Most people do the former and that’s perfectly fine.
Donating means either having a trace that links you to an illegal entity, or getting into the crypto mess
Prove it was me.
Truely paranoid? Get a vanilla visa
getting into the crypto mess
which leaves the trace as well, don’t kid yourself that crypto is anonymous
Some type of multi-dimensional quantum storage will be developed that will allow simultaneous, unlimited, instant sharing across as many different people as want to. This will all fit into something the size of a thumb drive and allow direct viewing/listening through implants.
I thought we will be running around with tablets, separate tablet for each new file, like in star trek :D
This, but batteries will not be replacable or rechargable. They will be disposable entertainment devices.
