Share

Share is the name for a new closed-source P2P application being developed in Japan by an anonymous author. Since the author of Winny was arrested, there have been no updates to the software. Due to this fact and growing concern about the security of Winny, Share was created and is gaining in popularity. It functions in much the same manner as Winny, using encrypted caches, filenames and IP addresses, and is based on the same node organized architecture as Winny.

Advantages Of Share

Share uses encryption to hide the identity of who is transferring or what they are transferring. It is non-centralized so it cannot be easily shutdown and it supports multiple source "swarm" downloading. All files are transferred encrypted so they must be decrypted upon download completion. In the mean time they are stored in encrypted form in a "Cache" folder. This folder is also used to allow your recently downloaded files to be shared among the network based on priorities.

Share also features a plugin system. The plugins and PDK are readily available through the Share network. The PDK is in Delphi.

Unlike Winny Share allows you to specify up to 255 Cluster keywords, though only 5 can be active at once (Winny only allowed 3 cluster words). These are used to connect to nodes that have also specified the same Cluster Keywords. This allows you to maintain connections with nods that are sharing files you might be interested in, while disconnecting from nodes that share content you are not concerned about.

You can specify auto-download triggers and auto-block filters. The network also appears to have some sort of a Forgery Warning system to warn people about possible falsified data/files.

Like Winny, Share uses Trip IDs to verify the identity of a person sharing a file. A Trip is a sort of encrypted key that indentifies a person is who they say they are. This allows you to decide whether or not you trust a person based on your previous sharing experience with them.

When a new version of Share is available, you will be given a notice in the Share statusbar. When this happens you can search for it on the share network and download it from a reliable source based on Trip. This internal method of distribution makes it hard to find a copy of the software outside of the (presumed safely anonymous) Share network, since offering this software publicly could lead to unwanted attention from law enforcement agencies.

(Possible) disadvantages Of Share

In Japan, high speed Internet is more readily available than in most of Western Europe and North America. For this reason the minimum upload and download limits are set to 50 kbit/s. Also, the cache system requires around 4 GB of free space at any given time to store cached downloads. This might be inconvenient for people with small hard drives.

Share is currently mainly used by Japanese (or people fluent in the Japanese language), therefore the bulk of shared resources are Japanese in origin.

Download

An official version of Share cannot currently be downloaded from a website due to concerns of legality in Japan, though unofficial versions are available from various sites. The latest version (A82 as of 2005-04-01 ) is available for download through other Japanese P2P networks such as Winny or WinMX.

Language Localizations

Unlike Winny Share includes an option for localization changes. In order to make the software work with your language, please download one of the following locale.txt files and copy it to your Share directory. You may wish to backup the old locale.txt before you do so.

• English Localization by SailorH Available Here
• English Localization by serika Available Here
• (Please add additional Localizations)

See also

• Anonymous P2P

External Links

• Japanese info/faq collection
• English info/faq site
• English Share discussion board
• Plugins info/links wiki
• Official homepage (via Freenet) - This link only works if you have Freenet installed and running.