EDonkey Network - Successor Protocols

Successor Protocols

The original eDonkey network relied on central servers run by users willing to donate the necessary bandwidth and processing/disk usage overhead. Such servers could be subject to heavy traffic and, consequently, more vulnerable to attacks.

To overcome this problem, MetaMachine, the developer of the original eDonkey client, developed Overnet as a successor to the eDonkey protocol. The eMule Project also developed a Kademlia network of their own (called Kad) to overcome the reliance on central servers. In addition, eMule includes a pure P2P client source-exchange capability, allowing a client with a ‘High ID’ (i. e., with incoming eD2k connections not blocked by a firewall) to continue downloading (and uploading) files with a high number of sources for days, even after complete disconnection from the original Kad or eD2k servers that handled the original requests. (eMule does not query secondary servers when told to disconnect from the server). This source-exchange capability is designed to reduce the load on servers by two thirds or more for files that have a large number of seeds, or sources (other clients) for the files. The original eDonkey client by MetaMachine does not support source exchanges.