faster file sharing?

[Ramoso]

where is the faster file sharing?

[anon]

What is this doing in the OCH forum

It all depends on what you want to download. For individual tracks, maybe you'll do better with Limewire or Ares, since there are usually a lot of other people that have them. Ares is also good for small program and game rips - it has a lot of very portable, SFX editions of well-known or classic games. But never run any EXE you download off Limewire or the Gnutella network in general, since I've yet to find one that isn't a fake, virus, trojan or general malware. It's a lot better if you use it just for MP3s.

For bigger stuff (ISOs, movies, releases, complete albums), BitTorrent is of course the better choice, since it was designed to specifically share large files. Of course stuff that isn't new anymore dies after a few days in public trackers, if we don't mention the (proportionally) large amount of fakes, viruses disguising as legit content and blank movies, among others, than in private trackers, specially those with no open signups. I have yet to find a fake/malware in anything I have downloaded from private trackers... maybe just a non-working crack, just once, in something I've DLed long ago, at the very most.
At ALTs (anti-leech trackers, another word for private trackers), most of the time there are a lot of seeders, because of the ratio system: you're supposed to upload as much as what you've downloaded to have a 1:1 ratio and keep on being able to use your account. If you don't upload anything, for whatever reason, your ratio will worse over time and if it drops below the tracker's minimum allowed figure (which can range from 0.4 to 0.9, depending on which one we're talking about), you're most of the time given a warning to seed back the file 1:1, or else be banned. Depending on how popular the tracker is, you can simply sign-up again, or, in other cases, have to wait until you get an invite.

But what if you can't upload to any leechers in the swarm (because of overseeding), there aren't any, your ISP charges you for upload or throttles your DL speed after you've uploaded, say, 200MB, etc... and therefore you can't upload as much as you've downloaded?
Most of the time you'll have to resort to cheating your ratio. Our board was created to help users with small bandwidths to "compete" against others in situations like this. You can find BitTorrent mods and tools here that'll help you with it. Getting a seedbox is also another option sometimes, but you have to pay for it. Some trackers also allow you to get "credits" over time (by keeping your BT client open when you're a seeder), that then you can exchange for uploaded GBs, "ratio fixes" on torrents, etc.

And, of course, if you're looking for rare material, there's always the eD2K (eMule) network. It has pretty much everything, so you're kind of guaranteed to find the file you're looking for. But, if using a "normal" client, you'll most of the time spend half your life in the other users' queues, while uploading all the time. So, the best option to speed up your downloads (and maybe secure yourself a bit), is to use a leecher mod. There are lots of them around. Some of the good ones that you can also find here at our board are the SBI Leecher, XdP and OFF+ mods. But, because of options like "no upload" (doesn't upload anything, which hurts the network over time), "fake rank" (makes others believe we'll be uploading to them soon, and maybe let them "push" us in their queue, when reality is that their QR may be 5000+, or we may not even have enough space in the queue to upload to them any time soon), "don't show files complete" (doesn't tell other clients you have 100% of the file even if so it is), or "community" (gives preference, or plain exclusivity, to other clients that successfully identify themselves as community members), etc., normal mod developers take efforts to disrupt the leecher mods' work - implementing anti-leecher protection such as DLP or Argos in their mods, that identify and ban/reduce the score of other clients detected as leecher, be it through their modstrings, nicknames, user hashes, etc. Yet reality is, leecher mods that can't really be identified through this kind of protection, and only maybe through heuristics, which can also ban good clients, exist.
If you choose to use a leecher-mod, make sure you set it up well and have an up-to-date server and node list, then start downloading.
After you have the full file, don't forget to use a "normal" or releaser mod to upload back to the network. I personally use ZZ-R, but Xtreme or ScarAngel are also good options.

[shoulder]

1. OCH isn't filesharing.

2. What exactly do you want to know?