eMule - P2P Client Review

[KUBU]

eMule - P2P Client Review

The mule mascot must have fascinated a lot among you, wondering its significance in KO's weekly product review. Without further ado, let me introduce one of the open-source P2P (Peer-2-Peer) file sharing tool, named, eMule.

If we trace its history, one could know that eMule's been developed from eDonkey2000 (ed2k). It has been updated from its predecessor with a lot of new features, and lesser bugs. During the era of Limewire and Kazaa, it takes a lot for eMule to reign the P2P market.

From the stats:

It is very clear that Limewire's dominating the industry, and eMule's used by a mere ~3% users. It isn't very popular among the P2P users, but very strong among the pros, due to its server-less mode, working under KAD. The network architecture is very convoluted. Due to its complex file-sharing paradigm, quite a lot of users claim that eMule is slow. eMule's renowned for its vast library, so a few believe, eMule's the terminus in the P2P world, ie, they get almost everything here. Moreover, it is an open-sourced application with no malware/spyware, under the GNU GPL.

Since KO is full of surprises, we are going to review this P2P app, which is not very famous.

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Installation:



It installed very quick on my notebook running Windows Vista Ultimate. The configuration takes a bit too much time, especially for novice users, it could be foiling. It had options to set the ports, and some advanced tunneling (obfuscation) mode to bypass the ISPs. I checked all the options while configuring.

Eg:



Using the Application:



eMule's splash screen is followed with the Server page, where the list of servers are displayed. We can connect to any server of our choice. The main concept of eMule is server-less network architecture, which makes it immune to any network attacks or server failure. Your node (computer) can also be listed as a server, after a couple of time, and you go "oh bummer, server?!", hence the eMule network is always alive n kickin'.


Searching:



My first search didn't yield any results, which cued what I said before on 'terminus'. I changed the search query to a more common one and was marveled by its speed (which is nothing less than Limewire), hosts, latency, etc. I quickly chose a file and queued for downloading. We can also notice that every file is assigned a MD4 hash value.


Downloading:



The appearance and details are somewhat similar to other P2P clients. The upper part is the download section, and the lower frame represents the upload section, which shows the bandwidth, number of files transfered, peers, etc. The bars display the portion of file downloaded and the are that is missing, etc, which is quite informative. The download bar moves at a slow tempo, which again proves that the eMule network is slow for a new user. Smaller files were completed fast, the larger ones suffered. The download speed depends on the number of servers you are currently connected and also the user-credit system that accolades regular users accordingly with better download speed, which is a very good feature to eradicate P2P hoaders.


Sharing:



It displays the files that are currently shared from your PC. Remember, the more you share and the more you upload (share), the more credits you achieve, thus gaining download speed. So its all about 'live and let live' principle. All the downloaded files are marked as shared.


Statistics:



An advanced download/upload tracer. Its for those network-junkie, who wants every detail of their download/transfer. Something new and powerful.


IRC Client:



Since eMule's designed for those tech-savvy users, they have added IRC (Internet Relay Chat), thus making it possible to interact with other IRC users, from different channels worldwide. A built-in eMule messenger is also present, which I didn't use since it requires registration. The BearShare network has similar option, which made it quite famous and dating-like, LoL.


Options:



Many advanced options that can be tailored for power-users.

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Like I said before, eMule is very reliable with plenty of sources. The entire system is consorted by its users, not servers/bots, which is the best part of this network. The main highlight of eMule is its long-lasting files database, which guarantees to find us the oldest files even from the primitive computer era. The 'advanced search' is commendable even without an indexing server. The most common files take an eternity to download, so new users can forget downloading a movie or larger volume of data. The versioning of this tool is very confusing, which is calculated in terms of years (ah, I didn't follow the versioning part much). I had problems understanding the eMule network intially, thus I attempted connecting to different servers in light of speed/sources. Impatient users can get frustrated with this tool. Free from spywares and its open-source.

A lot of websites ridiculed eMule, but we entrust you members to determine and post the final verdict. Also leave a note on your favorite P2P client how it differs from eMule.

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Courtesy:
- [Wikipedia]
- [eMule Project]
- [magnus_1986]

[Click here to download eMule]

[Sahara]

@ KUBU:
Very well done... This open source software is pretty good.. I tired downloading it right now and i came across these:

Originally Posted by eMule

Installer v0.49b Downloads: 31,337,305 | All Versions: 392,821,867
Download
This application installs eMule by a setup routine interactively, containing all languages and help files

Binaries v0.49b Downloads: 2,404,879 | All Versions: 41,011,929
Download
This archive contains only the files you need to run eMule and needs to be unzipped, with 4 languages only

Sourcecode v0.49b Downloads: 1,893,851 | All Versions: 19,280,427
Download
This archive contains only the sourcefile of this release and needs to be unzipped, read the readme.txt for instructions!

Which one do I download first? Which one do you suggest?

Thanks

[Samer]

Thanks KUBU, I've heard of this P2P software before... Never tried it tho.. Now going to install it and test because of your info-juicy review!

@Sahara... The first one is the Install file (Unzipped) Ready to install after downloading it
the second one is the zipped installer, and the third is the source-code for developers (KUBUs like)

Thanks again KUBU