P2P File Sharing Programs

Darius can be destroyed with a dab of white spirit and salt solution - consult your hardware dealer for more information

posted Aug 12, 04 | 1:53 pm
Windows XP Service Pack 2... more secure? Sure, but your favorite p2p apps might not work anymore. An update to the XP SP2's TCP/IP networking subsystem prevents more than 10 incomplete outgoing connections. What does this mean for p2p users? Bye Bye KaZaA, GNutella, and many others.
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Ironically, after p2p systems such as BitTorrent helped people get Service Pack 2, many users discovered that Microsoft has implemented a new "local connection queueing" system allowing only a maximum of 10 incomplete outgoing connections at a time, per port. This will severely effect the multi-source downloading aspect of any p2p application, as well as connectivity in systems such as BitTorrent, KaZaA, and GNutella. Microsoft has documented this update as a "security fix" to help avoid online threats, but it seems like they're dancing in circles around the problem itself.

Another, unrelated issue with SP2 has to do with a DivX incompatibility, as The Inquirer reports here: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=17782
"Anything that generates machine code into a memory buffer and then calls it will be hit, until the authors modify their software to tell Windows what they're doing. The calls for this have existed since the introduction of the Win32 API - it's just that until now, nothing went wrong if you didn't use them."

Seems like SP2 isn't all it's cracked up to be... at least maybe to the average pirate. So far, a group of individuals has found a way to raise the limit to 50 incomplete outgoing connections, but no other progress has been made as of now.