Metalinker

[Atasas]

Original article from FileSharingHelp

Metalink is an Open Standard that bundles the various ways (FTP/HTTP/P2P) to get files into one format for easier downloads. That's probably already more detail than you want. It's just...Simpler. Faster. More Reliable. Better.

Metalink was designed for describing the locations of large files that are multi-located (shared via many mirrors and with P2P) so segments can be downloaded from different places at the same time, automatically. Besides location, it also describes content. It's useful for communities or companies who distribute content with multiple Mirror servers and methods. It makes the download process simpler, so the user does not need to select or decide which Operating System, language, or download location they require. Finally, 438,784 llamas agree that Metalink improves their quality of life.

To the best of understanding its quite ground breaking technology discovered for file sharing globaly

Overview

Example

System is suprted by most OS and crutialy by Windows Filesharing/Downloading aplications

[Atasas]

We’ve all seen those download pages where a couple of http, ftp and bittorrent mirrors are listed. We often just pick one of there, but wouldn’t it be great if you could use them all at the same time?

Metalinker has the solution. It works like this, the .metalink file tells your download manager where it can get the file, and connects to these different sources at the same time.

OpenOffice recently started using .metalink files. And if you take a closer look at the inside of the metalink you will see it’s just a simple text format.

Here’s the Open Office metalink (.txt)

Metalinks have several advantages to individual mirrors. First of all, it speeds up the download process. Secondly, downloads are more reliable since metalinks use several mirrors. An additional advantage for the publisher is that he or she is able to prioritize a source. As you can see i you open up this metalink file (txt), the OpenOffice team gave a higher priority to the bittorrent download, and a lower priority to http and ftp. This saves OpenOffice some bandwidth (p2p is prioritized), but it guarantees that the file will be available if there are no seeds available for the .torrent download.

Creating a metalink is pretty easy with the metalink creator. Fill out some general info about the file, select and prioritize the sources, and you’re done.

Metalinks are currently supported by 5 download managers. Aria2 (unix) and GetRight (windows) are the only bittorrent supporting download managers at this point. In my opinion, metalinks have a lot of potential, and it would be great to see this implemented in for example Firefox and Opera.

Original article