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| Developer(s) | jasta |
|---|---|
| Initial release | 2003; 22 years ago (2003) |
| Stable release | 0.11.8.1[1]  / 27 November 2004 |
| Preview release | No [±] |
| Written in | C |
| Platform | Cross-platform |
| Available in | English |
| Type | Peer-to-peer |
| License | GNU GPL |
| Website | sourceforge |
giFT Internet File Transfer (giFT) is acomputer software daemon that allows severalfile sharing protocols to be used with a simple client having agraphical user interface (GUI). The client dynamically loadsplugins implementing the protocols, as they are required.[citation needed]
Clients implementing frontends for the giFT daemon communicate with its process using a lightweightnetwork protocol. This allows the networking protocol code to be completely abstracted from theuser interface. The giFT daemon is written using relativelycross-platformCcode, which means that it can be compiled for and executed on a big variety of operating systems. There are several giFTGUIfront-ends forMicrosoft Windows,Apple Macintosh, andUnix-likeoperating systems.[citation needed]
The namegiFT (giFT Internet File Transfer) is a so-calledrecursive 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 lacksUnicode support, which prevents sharing files with Unicode characters in their file names (such as "ø","ä", "å", "é" etc.).[citation needed] Also, giFT lacks many features needed to use thegnutella network effectively.
Available protocols are:[2]
Stable
giFT's sibling project is OpenFT, apeer-to-peer file-sharingnetwork protocol that has a structure in which nodes are divided into 'search' nodes and 'index'supernodes in addition to commonnodes. 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 nameOpenFT 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 theFastTrack protocol at the time OpenFT was designed.[citation needed]
Like FastTrack andNapster, OpenFT is a network wherenodes 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.[4]
OpenFT is also similar to thegnutella 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:
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.
 | This section needs to beupdated. The reason given is: claims things are "current" relating to software whose last release was over 10 years ago. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.(November 2022) |
| Name | Platform | License | Features | Latest version | Website |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| giFTcurs[7] | Unix-like | GPL |
| 0.6.2 | |
| Apollon[8][9] | Unix-like/KDE | GPL |
| 1.0.2.1 (2005-05-08) | apollon.sourceforge.net |
| KCeasy[10][11][12] | Microsoft Windows | GPL[13] |
| 0.19-rc1 (2008-02-03) | KCeasy Source Forge website |
| giFTwin32[12] | Microsoft Windows |
| |||
| Poisoned[14][15] | Mac OS X | GPL |
| 0.5191 (2006-08-08) | www.gottsilla.net |
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 keep lists of available search nodes, collect statistics, and try to maintain the structure of the network.
