GiFT

Image:GiFTcurs.png

Clients implementing frontends for the giFT daemon communicate with its process using a lightweight network protocol. This allows the networking protocol code to be completely abstracted from the user interface. The giFT daemon is written using relatively cross-platform C code, which means that it can be compiled for and executed on a big variety of operating systems. There are several giFT GUI front-ends for Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh, and Unix-like operating systems.{{Citation needed|date=November 2019}}

The name giFT (giFT Internet File Transfer) is a so-called recursive acronym, which means that it refers to itself in the expression for which it stands.

One of the biggest drawbacks of the giFT engine is that it currently lacks Unicode support, which prevents sharing files with Unicode characters in their file names (such as "ø","ä", "å", "é" etc.).{{Citation |last=S |first=Nikhilesh |title=nikki93/cgame |date=2024-09-12 |url=https://github.com/nikki93/cgame |access-date=2025-04-13}} Also, giFT lacks many features needed to use the gnutella network effectively.

Available protocols are:{{Cite web |url=http://gift.sourceforge.net/software/plugins.mhtml |title=GiFT: Network Plugins |access-date=2007-02-15 |archive-date=2007-02-16 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070216154221/http://gift.sourceforge.net/software/plugins.mhtml |url-status=dead }}

Stable

• OpenFT, giFT's own file sharing protocol{{cite web|title=giFT: Internet File Transfer |url=http://www.zeropaid.com/news/1038/gift_internet_file_transfer/ |date=2002-05-11 |access-date=2010-01-04 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110927104419/http://www.zeropaid.com/news/1038/gift_internet_file_transfer/ |archive-date=2011-09-27 }}
• gnutella (used by FrostWire, Shareaza)
• Turtle F2F

Beta version

• FastTrack (used by Kazaa). The giFT plugin is giFT-FastTrack.

Alpha version

• OpenNap
• eDonkey network
• Soulseek

Image:Apollon screenshot.png

giFT's sibling project is OpenFT, a peer-to-peer file-sharing network protocol that has a structure in which nodes are divided into 'search' nodes and 'index' supernodes in addition to common nodes. Since both projects are related very closely, when one says 'OpenFT', one can mean either one of two different things: the OpenFT protocol, or the implementation in the form of a plugin for giFT.

Although the name OpenFT stands for "Open FastTrack", the OpenFT protocol is an entirely new protocol design: only a few ideas in the OpenFT protocol are drawn from what little was known about the FastTrack protocol at the time OpenFT was designed.{{fact|date=February 2018}}

Like FastTrack and Napster, OpenFT is a network where nodes submit lists of shared files to other nodes to keep track of which files are available on the network. This reduces the bandwidth consumed from search requests at the price of additional memory and processing power on the nodes that store that information. The transmission of shared lists is not fully recursive: a node will only transmit its list of shared files to a single search node randomly chosen as that node's "parent", and the list of those files will not be further transmitted to other nodes.From the giFT documentation at [http://gift.sf.net the giFT homepage]

OpenFT is also similar to the gnutella network in that search requests are recursively forwarded in between the nodes that keep track of the shared files.

There are three different kinds of nodes on the OpenFT network:

; USER

: Most nodes are USER nodes; these have no special function.

; SEARCH

: These nodes handle search requests; they search the filelists their CHILD nodes (explained below) submit to them. These nodes must have a capable Internet connection and at least 128M RAM. A modern processor is highly recommended as well.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.

; INDEX

: Nodes with fast connections and much memory can be INDEX nodes, which keep lists of available search nodes, collect statistics, and try to maintain the structure of the network.According to the giFT documentation:

INDEX nodes keep lists of available search nodes, collect statistics, and try to maintain the structure of the network.

A node can be both a SEARCH and an INDEX node.

USER nodes will pick three SEARCH nodes to be their PARENT nodes. They will submit their shares list to them if the PARENT accepts the USER as its CHILD. By default, SEARCH nodes will be PARENTS for a maximum of 500 CHILD nodes.

{{update section|reason=claims things are "current" relating to software whose last release was over 10 years ago|date=November 2022}}

{{Portal|Free and open-source software}}

• MLDonkey - another plugin based multi-network P2P client

• Marcus Bergner, [https://web.archive.org/web/20100905131930/http://www8.cs.umu.se/~bergner/thesis/html/node62.html FastTrack] chapter in his MS Thesis "Improving Performance of Modern Peer-to-peer Services", 10 June 2003, Umeå University, chapter "discusses the FastTrack protocol used by the KaZaA family of file sharing applications. Since the protocol is a well kept secret most discussions will relate to the giFT project, an open source implementation attempting to provide similar capabilities."
• {{cite book | author1 = Choon Hoong Ding | author2 = Sarana Nutanong | author3 = Rajkumar Buyya | citeseerx = 10.1.1.70.3712 | chapter = Peer-to-Peer Networks for Content Sharing | editor1-first = Ramesh | editor1-last = Subramanian | editor2-first = Brian D. | editor2-last = Goodman | title = Peer-to-peer computing: the evolution of a disruptive technology | publisher = Idea Group | year = 2005 | isbn = 1-59140-430-4 | pages = [https://archive.org/details/peertopeercomput0000unse/page/58 58–61] | chapter-url = https://archive.org/details/peertopeercomput0000unse/page/58 }}
• {{cite web | title = Introduction to giFT - internet File Transfer | url = http://vodka-pomme.net/projects/introduction-to-gift-internet-file-transfer | date = 2007-01-06 | access-date = 2010-01-04}}

• Minaxi Gupta, Markus Jakobsson, Andrew Kalafut, and Sid Stamm, Crimeware and Peer-to-Peer Networks, chapter 3 in Markus Jakobsson, Zulfikar Ramzan, Crimeware: understanding new attacks and defenses, Addison-Wesley, 2008, {{ISBN|0-321-50195-0}}, pp. 55–76 (discuses malware in the OpenFT and Limewire networks)
• based on: {{cite conference |last1=Kalafut |first1=Andrew |last2=Acharya |first2=Abhinav |last3=Gupta |first3=Minaxi |year=2006 |title=A study of malware in peer-to-peer networks |book-title=Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGCOMM on Internet measurement |conference=IMC'06 |pages=327–332 |citeseerx=10.1.1.70.3712 |doi=10.1145/1177080.1177124 |isbn=1-59593-561-4}}

• [https://web.archive.org/web/20171123184905/http://gift.sourceforge.net/ Official website]

{{File sharing protocols}}

{{Gnutella|Gnutella clients}}

Category:Free file sharing software

Category:File sharing software for Linux

Category:Free software programmed in C

Category:Cross-platform software

Category:File sharing networks

Category:Software using the GNU General Public License