Gnutella is good at surviving... popularity is another matter...
The protocol looks good to me. The key elements of effective multisourcing are there; tiger tree is a good choice for hashing (allowing early verification of downloaded chunks); the supernode concept has been extended to 'node clusters' which opens up interesting possibilities for network self-organization.
I think Gnutella is evolving nicely. It may well remain a somehat experimental network while the more serious filesharing takes place elsewhere....
- but that's just fine... a free technical playground where both the clients and the protocol itself are subject to variation and 'darwinian competition' is a valuable and useful thing in itself...
- tg
