Limewire, KaZaA or Blubster?

The filesharing community has seen a great deal of upheaval and change over the past few years. First there was Napster, the all-popular file sharing program which faced legal action from RIAA and shut up shop. The music and film industry are still pursing suits against various filesharing developers, in relation to copyright issues. However, the next phase of filesharing programs has arrived, and might just be unstoppable! These days filesharing applications are peer-to-peer with have no central servers and the owners have minimal-no involvement in the network operations. The list of available software goes on and on - Morpheus, WinMX, Bearshare, Edonkey. Here I will look at the newest and most popular applications on the scene - Blubster, Limewire and KaZaA - and compare their various features.

First, a bit of background. Blubster, originally developed by Pablo Soto, uses a peer-to-peer network similar to the well-known Gnutella network and also without a central server. Blubster run a private UDP transport protocol, which they claim is more anonymous than Gnutella, and also considerably faster. The program is a directly executable file which connects an unlimited number of peers to its user network.

KaZaA, originally owned and developed by Amsterdam company Fast Track, is also 100% peer-to-peer with no central server. Recently sold to an Australian group, KaZaA has a large user base and maintains strong popularity as a free peer-to-peer filsharing program.

Limewire, developed by Lime Wire LLC, is an open network based on Gnutella. This means no central server, and using Limewire you can connect to anyone else running Gnutella compatible software. The latest release, version 2.2, uses "ultrapeer" technology to reduce the bandwidth requirements for users and thus aims to provide faster connection and downloading from the network.

Comparison Snapshot

Installation and Performance

Blubster is the easiest program to start using as there is no installation involved, it is simply an executable file. Because it doesn't need installation, it doesn't expand itself and create subdirectories as with other peer-to-peer applications. No installation means there is no un-install option. Also, there is no disconnect option - once you are running the .exe you are continuously connected to the Blubster community for file transferring. One great thing about Blubster is that it is incredibly easy to configure to run behind a firewall, which is an important security consideration these days. Most users have raved about the performance of this 2.7MB application - the only complaints appear to be that the program stalls on computers with insufficient memory. There is an easy fix for this problem though - turn off the multiple download option and you'll be flying again. Easy to get started, great performance - a sure winner!

Whilst not quite as simple as Blubster to get started, Limewire requires only a basic installation after downloading the program. Once installed you are ready to get going, and the program should operate behind a firewall. Many users have reported that Limewire is relatively unstable with frequent freezes or program crashes, but this appears to mainly be a problem on less powerful computer systems. Once installed, there is a regular pop-up window when an upgrade is available - helpful to some users, annoying for others. Unless you have a more recent computer set-up you might want to bypass this peer-to-peer sharer.

KaZaA is also simple to download, install and get started. It connects easily to the network, even behind a firewall. Some users report that it will disconnect randomly, which can be annoying in the middle of a download. It does use a considerable amount of the CPU during operation though, so you might find an overall slowing down of your system while you are using KaZaA, especially with older computers. However, the program is very stable and users rave about reliability.