In addition, this central point has a complete authority over the data distributed through the network and is solely responsible for its contents (Napsters legal problems stem from this fact). Since Napster has a single point of entry, the network can completely collapse if its central point becomes incapacitated. Finally, in July of 2001, Napster is forced to shutdown its servers due to software-related problems that occurred as a result of Napsters developers trying to ensure that these limitations are imposed throughout their network.īeside the copyright infringements, the reason why the Napster network fails to provide Quality of Service (QoS) to its users is due to its centralized peer-to-peer character. Unfortunately, due to violations of the copyright laws and by the order of the Supreme Court of the United States, Napster is forced to impose complex limitations on the shared files thereby downgrading the quality of their service. The upper limit on the number of users of Napster is only imposed by the bandwidth, as the service itself never lacks popularity. After his idea is implemented, Napster at one point attracted over 30 million users with over 800 thousand of them accessing the network simultaneously. The central computer would then at all times have an up-to-date master list of files that people are willing to share and the list would be updated by the users software as they log on and off the system.įannings idea required a network infrastructure of servers for the centralized peer-to-peer data access and data storage and a corresponding bandwidth for allowing a large number of user connections.

Fanning envisioned Napster as a service that allows users of his system to list the MP3-encoded music files that they are willing to share and let other users download them through the Napster network. In early 1999, Shawn Fanning, an undergraduate student at the Northeastern University in the United States, started a phenomenon called Napster.

Gnutella 2 clients