eXeem was a

peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network, forming a peer-to-peer network of Node ...

(P2P)

file sharing File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia (audio, images and video), documents or electronic books. Common methods of storage, transmission and dispersion include ...

client Client(s) or The Client may refer to: * Client (business) * Client (computing), hardware or software that accesses a remote service on another computer * Customer or client, a recipient of goods or services in return for monetary or other valuable ...

using the

BitTorrent BitTorrent is a Protocol (computing), communication protocol for peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P), which enables users to distribute data and electronic files over the Internet in a Decentralised system, decentralized manner. The protocol is d ...

protocol Protocol may refer to: Sociology and politics * Protocol (politics) Protocol originally (in Late Middle English, c. 15th century) meant the minutes or logbook taken at a meeting, upon which an agreement was based. The term now commonly refers to ...

. eXeem was designed to replace the need for

centralized Centralisation or centralization (American English) is the process by which the activities of an organisation, particularly those regarding planning, decision-making, and framing strategies and policies, become concentrated within a particular ...

trackers (servers which co-ordinate the transfer of

metadata Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive ...

across a BitTorrent

network Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics ...

). It largely failed to achieve this goal, and the project was canceled and eXeem's network was shut down by the end of 2005. eXeem was written in C++ using the open source

libtorrent libtorrent is an open-source implementation of the BitTorrent protocol. It is written in and has its main library interface in C++. Its most notable features are support for Mainline DHT, IPv6, HTTP seeds and μTorrent's peer exchange. libtor ...

library for its BitTorrent functionality.

Overview

eXeem was created by Swarm Systems Inc. which is located in

Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Kitts and Nevis, officially the Federation of Saint Christopher (St Kitts) and Nevis, is an island country consisting of the two islands of Saint Kitts and Nevis, both located in the West Indies, in the Leeward Islands chain of the Less ...

. The company employed Andrej Preston, the founder of Suprnova.org, as its

spokesperson A spokesperson, spokesman, or spokeswoman is someone engaged or elected to speak on behalf of others. Duties and function In the present media-sensitive world, many organizations are increasingly likely to employ professionals who have receiv ...

and public face of eXeem. Five thousand Suprnova.org users were selected to take part in a private

beta test The software release life cycle is the process of developing, testing, and distributing a software product (e.g., an operating system). It typically consists of several stages, such as pre-alpha, alpha, beta, and release candidate, before the fi ...

of eXeem before the public beta was released on January 21, 2005. eXeem's developers expected to implement the following features: * On-the-fly

encryption In Cryptography law, cryptography, encryption (more specifically, Code, encoding) is the process of transforming information in a way that, ideally, only authorized parties can decode. This process converts the original representation of the inf ...

and decryption * Searching by file

hash Hash, hashes, hash mark, or hashing may refer to: Substances * Hash (food), a coarse mixture of ingredients, often based on minced meat * Hash (stew), a pork and onion-based gravy found in South Carolina * Hash, a nickname for hashish, a canna ...

Quality of service Quality of service (QoS) is the description or measurement of the overall performance of a service, such as a telephony or computer network, or a cloud computing service, particularly the performance seen by the users of the network. To quantitat ...

features * Proper

Universal Plug and Play Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) is a set of networking protocols on the Internet Protocol (IP) that permits networked devices, such as personal computers, printers, Internet gateways, Wi-Fi access points and mobile devices, to seamlessly discover ...

-support * User comments & ratings, but only when the file has been downloaded (to prevent fake ratings) * Minimum limited upload rate (5 kB/s) to stop leechers.

Criticism of eXeem

Criticism of eXeem arose soon after it debuted and included: * eXeem's for-profit operating model, including support through advertising (much akin to

Kazaa Kazaa Media Desktop ( ) (once stylized as "KaZaA", but later usually written "Kazaa") was a peer-to-peer file sharing application using the FastTrack protocol licensed by Joltid Ltd. and operated as Kazaa by Sharman Networks. Kazaa was subsequ ...

) and a public beta that included HTML ads supported by Cydoor, which is widely considered to be spyware.P2PNet
, retrieved 2 May 2006 Ads-free versions called ''eXeem Lite

and ''BIT eXeem'' were subsequently released, and eXeem later replaced Cydoor with WhenU from version 0.21 onward. *

Closed source Proprietary software is software that grants its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner a legal monopoly by modern copyright and intellectual property law to exclude the recipient from freely sharing the software or modi ...

code development, in contrast with the

open-source model Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

followed by the most popular

software, on which eXeem is based. * No initial

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

versions, with no ability to allow third parties to

port A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as Hamburg, Manch ...

the code beyond

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

(as eXeem is closed source). * Seacay was released as a Linux Client for the eXeem network when eXeem version 0.21 was released (see screenshot, right )

Network

The eXeem network used super-peers that were used to track torrents (as ordinary

BitTorrent tracker A BitTorrent tracker is a special type of server that assists in the communication between peers using the BitTorrent protocol. In peer-to-peer file sharing, a software client on an end-user PC requests a file, and portions of the requested ...

s). These super-peers were also responsible for maintaining file lists, comments and ratings for part of the files in the network. When a peer that was tracking a torrent was closed or went down, a new peer was assigned to be the tracker for that particular torrent.

External links

News article on Slyck
– includes partial transcript of Sloncek interview
Spanish eXeem tutorial
{{File sharing File sharing software

Overview

Criticism of eXeem

Network

See also

References

External links