Kazaa/LimeWire/eDonkey was that it was resumable and could be downloaded from multiple sources
Napster was that you could download from someone else (and search) across all the users connected - you don’t have to connect to each server.
Warez sites was that you could use the web. But all the links were broken all the time. Hotline made you run your own servers and you could be a little king of your own kingdom. But you couldn’t search.
Newsgroups had direct downloads and files broken down into small multi part rar, with parity checks to make sure nothing ea corrupted.
IRC/XDCC had bots that you requested files from, and if they didn’t have it they would sometimes find it for you and notify you when it became available.
I think the major advantage was pulling from multiple sources instead of just one other asshole on dialup. I think all the way back to Napster and even http download managers at that time could resume downloads if you lost connection
Wasn’t one of the major advantages of torrents the fact you could interrupt a download without loosing the partial data?
Torrents was that it was decentralised
Kazaa/LimeWire/eDonkey was that it was resumable and could be downloaded from multiple sources
Napster was that you could download from someone else (and search) across all the users connected - you don’t have to connect to each server.
Warez sites was that you could use the web. But all the links were broken all the time. Hotline made you run your own servers and you could be a little king of your own kingdom. But you couldn’t search.
Hell yeah. I loved Hotline.
Retroshare is a modern equivalent, but there are no trackers, so you have to have some other way to find servers.
Newsgroups had direct downloads and files broken down into small multi part rar, with parity checks to make sure nothing ea corrupted.
IRC/XDCC had bots that you requested files from, and if they didn’t have it they would sometimes find it for you and notify you when it became available.
It still is
I think the major advantage was pulling from multiple sources instead of just one other asshole on dialup. I think all the way back to Napster and even http download managers at that time could resume downloads if you lost connection