Posted by speeder on 09/22/05 00:45

On 21 Sep 2005 11:02:15 -0700, "FatKat" <robynari@juno.com> wrote:

>BTW, if WinMX was never centralized, and ran on its many primary nodes,
>how can FrontCode (or any one person or entity) be able to shut it
>down?

It's simple. When you start WinMX, it doesn't know any primary to
connect to. It connects to the WinMX server peer cache, gets a list of
current primary IPs and then goes from there. Once it knows at least
one primary it can keep going on its own as primaries talk to each
other and maintain a list of online primary IPs.

The network is considered decentralized since it doesn't need the peer
cache (like BT needs a tracker, for example) once it's going but it
does need a central server to act during startup. This has always been
an achilles heel.

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