Is winmx dying ?

[Blitzen]

Simple question how do people feel ? in my opinion winmx is dying or at least as far as the chat rooms go it is. Most rooms have to rely on chat clients and fake user programs to make their room look popular but in truth there maybe only 5 or 6 real users out of say 50 in the room, a quick browse of a few supposed users and the lack of anyone chatting soon makes it obvious as well as so many of the usernames following a set pattern. It is sad to see as many will remember the good old days when chat rooms were buzzing and a download started at night would be finished by the morning. But why the decline, is it that a new client was needed long ago with more functionality to keep users interested, or is it that files are allot more easier and faster to obtain on other networks maybe its that ISP`s are throttling /blocking winmx beyond use ? 

But can anything be done to halt the decline?  i fear not as it seems there simply is not the interest in winmx nowadays which can be highlighted by the lack of people coming forward to create a new winmx client. The chat rooms use to be the backbone of winmx but it appears that is crumbling and when it goes what will be left ................

[White Stripes]

もし話す日本語が非常に生きてはるかに

..but i dont... tho google translate may come in handy...

..many (incl myself*) have given up on MX and moved to other p2p...


*i stick around the forums to see if a clone client or patch2.0 comes about and this trend reverses....

[Max™]

well, i have seen a drop in people, rooms etc,
i do allow clients in my room, but i dont use a room filler,

i have noticed that it seems everyone wants to open a movie room & show off what they got off torrents,
but when somebody wants a movie, you get "im capped" meaning it will take forever,
a small few rooms make you become a member to get a start, if you dont, they wont,

one room i see in his topic "minimum 1,000 files to enter or be kicked" had 3 names in,
this sort of rooms is killing the art of conversation as you dont need to chat, just park in as many rooms as you like,
another room will kick you if you dont have movies, no matter how many mp3's or apps, they also insist all members use the 0-0 hack,

so with all these mesures to make sure you join a room to get a start, or have the files they want, is it any wonder people dont want to use winmx,
one room i was invited to, as i entered i was port scanned by the host while being told im not sharing enough files,
they denied the port scan, until i showed the offending ip & hostname, it just happened to belong to the host, i was promptly kicked.

[Blitzen]

For sure the rooms have changed allot, when i first started on winmx rooms were hosted from winmx, there were no chat bots just people chatting and sharing files. Nowadays theres not much you cannot do from a room !! like get info from a web site from within the chat room, type in any colour you like and so on. Theres even ASCII artwork in many of the rooms, it really is a world apart from the chat rooms of years ago. Indeed it has encouraged more people to open their own rooms but at the same time spreading people out more and thus creating many small rooms with only handfulls of (real) people in them.

It seems winmx has many things going against it on many fronts, it would be nice to see something going for winmx

[GhostShip]

I,m sure you all know my thoughts on this topic, theres no harm in asking the question but there can be harm in allowing folks to become dispondent and drained of hope, thus I once again reiterate that even if no one else is going to deliver a client I will , it wont be the most spectacular but it will work and I hope form the basis of something better once others have seen how it works, there is a very serious lack of coders and in time honoured tradition folks will be looking at how winmx can be improved, this is what we have always discussed amongst ourselves, but in closing lets remember one vital facet of winmx, US, as long as we hold firm the cartel are powerless and unable to dictate our future, never forget that folks.

If you know any coders drag them to me and I will put them to work, if you are able, learn to code and join me in creating our future, a dream need not remain so when folks are able to make it reality.

[bu44er]

If anyone can help me learn how to code, i will get my hands dirty. Ghost, you know how I feel towards Winmx.

[GhostShip]

We all feel the same here Watcher, although we know a client is well overdue its not yet beyond out grasp if we all take a part in doing what we can to bring any client project to fruit.

Taffy has offered to help me and now you too watcher, that's good progress and I will be PM'ing you both very soon to get you both into helping me with my project, if other projects need help then I can only ask they too get the cap out and come ask for it from those folks who use this site, we stand a better chance of reaching some kind of release if we have more hands and eyes on the job.

Before anyone posts about an offer of help they have made some time ago I would like to point out that two of the more promising offers had to be turned down as those offering where known to be one-time network/user abusers and while we can expect some trouble from this quarter in the future I felt it wasn't in the best interests of the community if they came in on the "ground floor" so to speak when the potential for mischief and thus damage to the project is vastly more likely, as the current project is under way and partially built I state without reservation that we will  need help at some stage but all the while that its possible to continue by hard work and trusted folks that's the way it shall continue, I hope this doesn't upset anyone its not meant as an insult but I,m sure those affected know that user confidence is of the utmost importance and a "bad guy/gal" on the team would likely mean we are building on sand in the long run.

If folks cant code they can do other things for suporting winmx , give winmx a mention in passing when your on other forums or topics, create some avatars or logo banners for winmx users to display on this site and elsewhere, if your adventurous make a captiva or flash winmx guide for youtube or even an ad and  in general fly the flag for our network when you can, we are all in this together and without each other we will indeed be on the slippery slope, we have the keys to our own future lets use them and buck the trend, the only thing holding us back is ourselves.

[Pri]

As others have said there are many problems and hurdles that stop WinMX from getting a resurgence. The main one is file speed. Bittorrent is a lot faster and its not just because there is more users per file shared.

I think now looking at it logically I believe to save WinMX we are going to have to kill WinMX. Specifically what I mean is instead of trying to clone WinMX in a new client we need to just start over with a better protocol design based on the same design and function of other current generation P2P protocols such as Bittorrent. The WinMX protocol will never be able to compete even if we extended it to support 64-bit integers for file sizes and random bit downloading & uploading. It will always be behind.

So what am I really suggesting? If we start over is it still WinMX? - Obviously its not in a literal sense. But I believe that the main thing that makes WinMX what it is, is the chat. Black backgrounds, lots of color, easy readability and standards. It looks good. All the other chat clients use white backgrounds and thus most color doesn't look good on them. These are the things that set WinMX apart and we need to replicate that in a new client while modernizing everything else.

I'm sure you are all aware of Direct Connect. WinMX is like Direct Connect except it has black backgrounds and a central infrastructure that connects every peer together instead of leaving the network fragmented in tiny hubs like Direct Connect does.

I know this is a drastic idea for many here. It would be a large departure from current thinking and its just my opinion obviously I know many wont share it but this is what I believe we will need to do in the long run. Simply making a new client with the same features from 2005 won't change anything, we need to go radical.

[Blitzen]

I tend to agree with what Pri says, a new client needs to be able to compete with today's other p2p programs. There is no point in having a new client with the same functions as the current winmx it is simply outdated. The file transfer part needs an overhaul in that maybe there be at least one permanent upload slot to do away with the 0 of 0 hack or maybe a totally new file transfer similar to that of other networks. The chat side of winmx is certainly what sets winmx apart from other networks and is why so many die hard fans still use winmx but at the same time obtain files from other networks. But the main problem it seems is as has been stated there seems to be no coders standing up to be counted which is a shame and makes such discusions pointless sadly. There has to be someone out there with the ability so come forward please !!!

*EDIT  if a coder cannot be found by say a set date pop a donate button on the site and see if enough funds can be raised to pay for a free lance coder to come in and do whats needed, in other words no more sitting around waiting. If the community wants a new client iam sure the donations will flood in if that was the road taken.

[Max™]

Hi All,
Blitsen, you said the chat rooms are what keep us die hard fans here,
well i have looked at other places like filetopia and more, their chat is dull, boring, the bot is only an auto admin login, no other features, no games,
nobody even comes close to winmx chat rooms, we have the best rooms, good colours and bots you can do so much with,

also i agree with something that stops the 0-0 hack, but that will upset alot of movie rooms as they rely on not starting people unless they join the room,
this is selfish and not good sharing etiquette showing files you dont intend to let people have,
part of the reason i dont use winmx much is the 0-0 hack leeches, people i seen the same names on here for years that still have 0 files, yet are in our queues every day, my other reason is as well as not wanting to lag the 3 rooms i hold.

[GhostShip]

If anyone was going to start a donating effort it would have to be on a different site than this one as we have seen in the past that the cartel will try to steal any donations by legal maneuvers and time wasting litigation to waste said money. I dont favour this route as it leads to bad blood in the end with folks able to make cheap accusations of theivery and profit making that are untrue but never the less sour the whole idea for all involved, you all know there are some spiteful posters out there just waiting to say such things and I for one don't wish to give such ppl a platform or a foothold by doing anything for money or taking the users money.

I have taken the idea of a new client on board some time ago but as I stated then until folks get together to flesh out some alternative implementation we are just talking hyperbole and little substance, the road I,m currently on is to manufacture a clone client and then we can make gradual changes that offer features and improvements that folks want a part of, this is the road forward in my view as lets be honest if someone comes here with a hacked up copy of another networks client and says "look this is the new winmx" we would all laugh at them, what folks are used to must be reflected in some way in the new client or it will be seen as a non-winmx client and rejected by the users, we all know this is the case.

I don't agree bit torrent is faster per se than winmx is, whats often not obvious to bit torrent users is that many of the seeders are using servers located in far off lands to deliver the files from and also having multiple users delivering a file is obviously preferable to having a single user doing so, aside from losing your privacy wholesale by using such a scheme the item of contention for me and many others is that you can preview a winmx file but not a bit-torrent one and thus your faced with an all or nothing scenario before you find out whether the file you obtained is genuine or whether some brain-dead type has wasted your bandwidth. if folks state bit torrent is faster then I ask them to show me where the speed control is on in the socket layer as I for one have never seen such a control, all transfers should run at the same speed bar network topography differences, if they don't its likely as we have know for some time that throttling and blocking are key factors here and must not be confused with the same event albeit one that's  encrypted and thus an unthrottled version of the same event, comparing the two is very misleading.

I know I suggest the slow road but its one we can make under our own steam and using our own folks, but I,m not against a new network, I merely want those pushing such a concept to look at the details  the "how and why" of a replacement so we can ensure it would be as safe as possible and not expose users to some un though out flaw or attack, I know i have said all this before so forgive me for repeating much of it but it has to be said and I,m sure the discussion will proceed in a more positive vein if we outline a future based on what we are confident of delivering in a fixed time as opposed to something that's not hit the drawing board let alone come from it.

[Blitzen]

There are some respected coders within the community like Pri, Zenar,Mind, Emulator and Eagle to name a few can neither of these guys deliver a new client or is there some kind of stumbling block  for them ?

[Pri]

I try to help out where I can but I have a life and work like the others. And some are still at college / university and don't have time for it.

Bittorrent is a lot faster no mater what way you look at it. And previewing of Bittorrent files while they are downloading is possible in clients that allow you to prioritize the first blocks of a file. The mere fact that Bittorrent does not have any type of queuing and your downloads _always_ start instantly even if its just 5-10KB/ps puts it above WinMX. Many people on private trackers use dedicated servers but not many do on the Public trackers and its still easy to hit multiple-megabyte speeds on public trackers. Yes they lack security but the pros of the protocol outweigh the cons for the people who use it. That is why people use it. Speed. If WinMX was faster than Bittorrent people would be all over it, but that isn't the case.

And just to touch on the sampling a file thing. The random bit downloading and uploading of Bittorrent is what makes it so fast. If you download a file on WinMX it always downloads the first bits first. That means if you have just shared a file and 20 people are downloading from you, they all only have that first bit. They cant share data among themselves to complete the download faster. But with Bittorrent you can give the last 2% to one guy, middle 5% to another, the beginning 10% to someone else and each of those users will share what they have with eachother whilst your still giving it out aswell. This creates a 'swarm' where the peers are trading parts of the data no matter where in the file it is from and it significantly increases download speed. It is the entire reason that Bittorrent is so fast and why everyone is using it for data delivery including Twitter now: http://torrentfreak.com/twitter-uses-bittorrent-for-server-deployment-100210/

You also mentioned fake files. I can tell you I have never got a fake file on Bittorrent. Never ever. Yes they exist but this is like Viruses and Spyware if you are smart you wont download things that are obviously fake. If you download a file that is a DVDRIP of a movie before its even released in cinemas then that is your fault for being so naive. Read the comments, download verified torrents and download from verified users. All these torrent sites that allow you to upload files allow you to create accounts, download from trusted users eliminates fake file problems. And this is before we even consider the Sample files that are delivered with many torrents these days a 13MB or so file that gives you a sample of the included file with the same bitrate & codec.

Sometimes I think we'd be better just to take an open source bittorrent client and stick the WPN network chat on it and use magnet torrent links inside the chat to share files. Would solve all our problems and we could finally start to market a client again. We could become as big as uTorrent and the chat would be right there for people to use.

[Blitzen]

Iam liking Pri`s idea there and if that could be done incorperate a bittorrent clinet with the winmx chat added i think that would be an ultimate p2p program !

[GhostShip]

I,m sure you do like Pris ideas but lets look sensibly, how many folks get a nasty letter from using bit torrent ?  From the copyright extremists own figures they send out 200,000 per month , contrast that to WinMX where folks never get one despite many being on the network 5+years, if there are multiple users of winmx then a file can be downloaded just as fast as on torrents where there seem currently to be many users,unfortunately the real picture is if you are slow to grab something that's new and fresh the chances are you wont be able to find seeds, a cursory look at any of the bit torrent sites sees many folks begging for seeds to join a swarm as they are stuck with a large part of a file that in many cases is never completed and that's without a discussion of fake files that are prevalent on public sites.

What seems to have been forgotten here is that we are not a torrent network and as Pri has demonstrated here publicly there is no difference between a socket layer on a p2p application that allow for any speed differences, he wisely moves on the implementational issues and an explanation of how (in case you didnt know ) bit torrent works and hopefully that explains to those of you who didnt know its major security flaw and just why the cartels are able to send out so many warning letters to its users, even more of concern its not just warning letters folks get its demands for payment, yes bit torrent is an on paper great solution for some things but as usual its not winmx its not peer to peer, there is no search facilities on a torrent client, sure some have a link to a site that could be closed down or log your IP address and the whole system relies on there being trackers, these are two points of weakness not mentioned above.

 Ask me If I want to trade in a racehorse for a gas guzzling car that will run out of juice down the road and you have your own answer I hope, I,m looking to the future but it wont involve bit torrent, peer 2 peer for me is about sharing not simply downloading ,if that's all folks want to do then maybe torrents are the place for them but we all know the truth of the matter, there are no friends in torrenting.

[White Stripes]

chat + filesharing tends to cause politics (such as the 0 of 0 hack and the demand that a user be in a room to download)... i for one like that bittorrent doesnt have a chat or PM function in its protocol... chatting is for IRC and IM services (which, btw, you can send a BT magnet link over quite easily)... bittorrent is for transfers... and GS... its ~1yr away from a new decade and MX will die with the 'slow move' method you present... if it wasnt for the huge japanese userbase it would already be dead.... simply run tcpview from sysinternals and watch the locations winmx connects to...

much as it hurts... you have to admit.... nothing good lasts forever... even bittorrent will see its final days traded in for something even more innovative... heh... even bittorrent itself is evolving... with the UDP based 'uTP' protocol that far outstrips the current TCP based method... (surf and download 24/7 at the same time without even 'feeling' the weight of the download on your web surfing --- and im on dialup and can vouch for this...)

your good racehorse is running its final laps... and that gas guzzling car... doesnt guzzle gas anymore....

being nostalgic is one thing... i have my fair share of 45rpm records and 8tracks.... but living in the past is another... you'll never see a new 45rpm 'big hole' record or 8track tape outside of very tight enthusiast circles.... you need to let go... not now perhaps... but eventually...

[Pri]

Bittorrent has a thing called DHT or "Distributed hash tables" It allows Bittorrent to work without a central server (Tracker) handling the swarms. Peers group together and exchange metadata which enables transfers without a point of failuer. This would be the ideal solution for an MX based bittorrent client. And ghost I get what you are saying about security but WinMX is dying and it wont survive like this. People want files, they want them faster than WinMX can provide them. That is why Bittorrent is so popular it is faster.

I understand how you see WinMX about sharing etc but that wont save it. Eventually it will die unless it is brought up with its competitors. The one thing missing from Bittorrent is chat and if you build a client with a really compelling chatting system (Like WinMX has) it will be a sure fired hit. It is not your responsibility to worry about any illegal content the users trade and what risks they partake in.

I think you want WinMX to stay a niche because you believe this brings security. But it also brings a poor downloading experience and that is what the majority of people on the internet are after that is the reason WinMX is shedding peers, that is the reason everyone and there dog is using WPCC on the network instead of WinMX.

IRC is quite popular as you all know. Perhaps we are looking at this WinMX situation in a wrong way. People love the way the WinMX chat looks perhaps its time we built 3rd party channel listing tools and started to advertise WinMX as a chatting system like IRC. Atleast that way we can broaden its appeal as not a 2nd rate P2P client but as a 1st class chat system. I'd very much be happy to see a resurgence of users who come to chat and once we have a large talkative community we can start to invest in file sharing again. All I know is we gotta do something to secure the community or before long it'll be gone.

[wonderer]

I really can't see why some people are doomtalking WinMx and don't do a f*ck to help making a better client. By all means, the concept is splendid, better than all other P2P as far as I know. Distributing files on WPN can be much faster than Bittorrent.
Even newsgroups take longer than WinMx. Another advantage of WinMx above most other means is the availability of files.
The torrents die out pretty soon after seeding stops and just due to the same habit we often see on WinMx, if the file is downloaded it is taken out of share. On newsgroups you depend on retention and the free newsgroups have pretty short retention.
Resuming, WinMx is far better and the chatrooms can and should be used to exchange information. I have found many rare files just by hopping rooms and asking. Try that on irc, the "communication" on most other p2p.

[]-[êll.Ôñ.ËÀR'][']-[.]

Please bear in mind I'm just chucking this out there as kinda devils advocate and not wishing to start any arguments (for a change  )

I,m sure you do like Pris ideas but lets look sensibly, how many folks get a nasty letter from using bit torrent ?  From the copyright extremists own figures they send out 200,000 per month , contrast that to WinMX where folks never get one despite many being on the network 5+years

True but considering bit torrent now accounts for between 50/60% of all internet traffic these days its no suprise they are sending out letters to bit torrent users... if the shoe was on the other foot and winmx was as popular im damn sure they would have invested a lot more time and effort on trying to catch winmx users as they do to torrent users.

Remember the days when winmx was popular and what happened......it got closed and has never and in its current guise will never recover to such heights again as things stand & one of the main reasons for this is the fact its just not cool anymore.... like it or not its the truth to a lot of people.
Chat to any of the younger generation these days (also a hell of a lot of older users) what do they use on the internet for socialising they will tell you ...Facebook twatter & many other of the dozens of social networking sites out there
So why come to winmx & comparative minute amount of users on there compaired to elsewhere on the net?

if there are multiple users of winmx then a file can be downloaded just as fast as on torrents

This is also true but there lies the problem that on torrents you can 99% guarantee that you will have them multiple users to grab almost any file needed in double quick time due to the vast amount of users at any given time.... on winmx for many reason you could be waiting for days/ weeks if not at all to gain that complete file due to the lack of users & as max pointed out the unreasonable behavior of so many file sharers on winmx.... who wants to join a room just to download a movie these days when a couple of clicks you can get it anyway from elsewhere..... who wants to be constantly be bumped down queues in favour of others when you can grab a torrent and be pretty much assured of getting it.

unfortunately the real picture is if you are slow to grab something that's new and fresh the chances are you wont be able to find seeds

Having been a regular user of torrents for several years I'm afraid i have to beg to differ on that & in my experience the longer you leave it the bigger chance you have of finding plenty of seeds.... the saturation point out there these days is so high you can be pretty much assured of getting what you want within a few hours depending on your connection for most any file you are looking for.... especially if you are one of the more savvy users and belong to some of the hundreds of private but free sites out there.

As for the fake files anyone but a novice knows these days exactly what ones to steer clear of as they pretty much come with a belisha beacon fitted as standard to anyone who has any idea on torrents.

Any half savvy user of torrents these days will use one of the many means of avoidance from the cartels & its been quoted recently that by the end of the year at least 30% will be using vpn,s to avoid detection as well as the many other options of avoidance out there at the present time (all constantly being updated for anti detection a lot faster than any of the cartells can keep up with)

there is no search facilities on a torrent client, sure some have a link to a site that could be closed down

There are search facility's linked to sites that can easily be customised to whatever sites of your own preference real easily..... if one closes there are thousands of other sites/trackers out there and more new ones every day that can be added.... so overall you stand a hell of a lot more chance of getting what you want and when you want it than you have on winmx.

peer 2 peer for me is about sharing not simply downloading ,if that's all folks want to do then maybe torrents are the place for them but we all know the truth of the matter, there are no friends in torrenting.

You will always get the freeloaders on whatever client you use & winmx is no exception to this and never has been... most serious torrent users will share and also a lot belong to sites where sharing a certain percentage is mandatory in order to stay a member ( this is also non discriminate as to what files are shared unlike a lot of winmx sharers who say they wont upload unless you have a certain number or certain type of files)

Saying there are no friends in torrenting is way far of the truth I'm afraid as there are thousands of community's out there for torrent users with millions of users interacting all the time in many different ways and levels ( i personally belong to a few forums out there with live chat & regularly converse with hundreds of friendly people... a hell of a lot more than can be found on winmx chatting these days.

a quote from max`s post

nobody even comes close to winmx chat rooms, we have the best rooms, good colours and bots you can do so much with

This might well be the case in your rooms and a select few but the user base is getting so low especially on the chat side that good rooms are very few and far between unlike the old days when 100+ people in a room was quite common (damn the times my PC crashed back then lol)

As i said at the start of this post

Please bear in mind I'm just chucking this out there as kinda devils advocate and not wishing to start any arguments

But the shear fact that 50/60% of all all traffic is torrent related speaks volumes for what people want these days.

But in answer to the question

Re: Is winmx dying ?

I believe unless there are some radical changes it will just end up limping along until it does & this is something i would hate to see as i have been involved for many years now making a lot of good friends along the way & whatever happens in the future i will still be here... for me it has a addictive charm to it ... something that at times you may take a break from but always end up coming back to but sadly this only seems to be the case for a dwindling amount of winmx users as the newer generation want what i have pointed out above and not something that is just not considered cool these days as it stands.

I cant code but given time and a few pointers I'm sure i could give it a good bash..... i am willing to help out in whatever way i can even if it did mean parting with a few quid to kick start things if necessary.

[GhostShip]

So why come to winmx & comparative minute amount of users on there compaired to elsewhere on the net?

Hell this is the obvious self fulfilling prophecy, its pretty obvious that if you state something is a fact a quantity of others will believe you and act accordingly thus you make yourself right whether you are or not. The same applies to the que aspect, would we really need to que if there are multiple copies of the file ?  more users = more sources.

I regularly find no seed torrents when I,m trying to track down rare and obscure content, it seems if I wanted the latest copyright content there would be no problem but if you want some old program or src for something you can forget it, your observations merely indicate your downloading habits I feel.

I hear a lot of torrent folks talk about trackers and sites that do the searching for them and now your talking about using a VPN, that costs cash so once again we are talking about trading in something that costs you nothing and replacing it with a cash cow for someone and being reliant on server operators who are in turn in need of cash,  see anything wrong with this model yet ?

It seems a lot of folks posting in this topic are folks who have already traded in their freedom for the insecurity of private or public torrent sites and this is a great shame but its more a reflection on them that they have left WinMX and then come here to complain or justify themselves with talk that folks are leaving, as I stated above, the self fulfilling prophecy is simple to state but does nothing to fix the problem and it seems from the amount of comments stating bit torrent is the new way ahead that such posters are the problem , WinMX works just fine and will do so for as long as folks use it , whatever their nationality, as Wonderer paraphrased above : if all the folks moaning did something to help and where positive in their attitude would anyone be talking like they are here ?

I think not, for those who believe torrents are the way ahead because they are the latest "fad" I feel sorry for you, I remember when kazzaa was the latest fad and Napster before that, and please take the time to correlate the threats to close major torrent sites with activity here, yes that's right when the big boys close down folks flock back to their old faithful, please ask yourselves why that is and why I for one wont be giving up as easily as many of you seem to be doing.


PS: if you guys want to go ahead with creating a chat network that runs alongside Torrents dont let me put you off if thats the way you want to go, anything that keeps folks together in a community is of value and in the global war with the cartel we all need to stand firm in doing whatever we can to ensure we are free to communicate our dislike of their products