Fresh info on WinMX

[TankGirl]

Slyck has just published a fresh interview with FrontCode's president Kevin Hearn. FrontCode has never been too wordy about their plans and doinds so this is probably interesting reading for all active WinMX users.... napsterized here for your reading pleasure...

- tg

=========================================


WinMX has long been a favorite of the file-sharing community. Its reliability, bitrate diversity and wide variety of files has made WinMX one of the best kept secrets of P2P networking. Millions have flocked to this community, which in terms of user population is only narrowly eclipsed by the FastTrack network. WinMX is developed by FrontCode technologies, headed by President Kevin Hearn. We've been in continuous communication with WinMX, who are always willing to give us the latest news on this spyware-free client. For this interview, we got right to the point and asked the most important questions on the minds of WinMX fans across the globe.

Slyck.com: What insight can you give us about future development of WinMX?

FrontCode: Development is continuing on an accelerated basis. We are currently doing a step by step, section by section overhaul of the entire program. During this process we will be releasing new versions as each section overhaul has been completed, perhaps once every week or two, but these upgrades will remain compatible with the current v3.22 peer network. Our first priority is going to be reducing CPU usage on primary connections, better multi-byte character set compatibility, and a more efficient and more user-configurable auto-complete system.

Slyck.com: Your network seems to be staying off the RIAA's radar, any concern about future problems with the music industry? How does WinMX plan to respond to such a threat?

FrontCode: No comment.

Slyck.com: What's the population of WinMX (unique IP's, simultaneous users daily/weekly)? Any insight into the networks population, its trends, or any difference since the release of the 3.X series would be appreciated.

FrontCode: (March 30, 2002 response): On Monday, I finally put our recent hardware upgrades to work and put a trace into our system to measure unique IP levels in our v2.6 peer caches. The lowest day this week (wednesday) there were ~2.1 million unique IPs that used any of our v2.6 caches. On the highest day (friday), we measured 2.7M unique IPs. Based on these numbers, I would conservatively estimate our daily simultaneously connected client peak at about 1 million. Because we only know when a user gets on the network, and not when they exit, converting the daily unique count into a peak population count is a bit sketchy at best.

(July 10, 2002 response): The manner in which the 3.x series peer network and it's caches operate makes it much more difficult for us to calculate any network population counts. However, based on what we see on the network (search results, # of chat rooms, etc...), I would estimate the network is growing by at least 10% per week since the release of v3.22.

(Slyck note): Ok, here's some quick math...Conservatively estimating, let's assume WinMX's population remained at 1 million simultaneous users since March 30. WinMX 3.22 has been available for two weeks, which mean WinMX's population has grown by 10%, two times, during that period.

Week 1 - 1,000,000, plus a growth rate of 10% = 1,100,000 unique simultaneous IP's.
Week 2 - 1,100,000, plus a growth rate of 10% = 1,210,000 unique simultaneous IP's.

Remember, we low-balled these numbers to avoid over estimating the network size. The actual size of the WinMX P2P network is likely much greater, placing it only slightly behind FastTrack.

Slyck.com: WinMX is free of spyware, adware and pop-ups yet continues to distribute its software at no cost. How does WinMX stay in operation, and does it plan to change its "no spyware" policy?

FrontCode: We stay in operation by keeping our costs low. Instead of loading WinMX with a bunch of spyware in order make enough money to pay for several dozen useless employees who will just end up sitting around playing solitaire all day, we think it's smarter to skip the spyware, generate revenue from quality ad exposures on www.winmx.com, and spend the money on important things such as a small yet well rewarded development team, legal contingency funds, etc. A smaller, yet very highly skilled development team makes us more efficient at improving WinMX and furthering P2P technology in general, and means the end user doesn't get screwed with spyware. It's win-win.

Slyck.com: Any chance of permanent chat rooms for WinMX? Would such a venture be possible in a decentralized environment?

FrontCode: We actually might have a few permanent high-cap chat rooms popping up in the near future, but it's still on the drawing board. This is definitely something we are also interested in.

There you have it, the latest from WinMX. We would like to thank Kevin for taking the time out of his busy schedule to speak with us. Slyck.com encourages the file-sharing community to visit this P2P community, and find out why more than 1 million individuals are plugged into this network. If there're any other follow-up questions you'd like to see, email us with your questions and we'll conduct another interview.