eXeem was a peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing client using the BitTorrent protocol. eXeem was designed to replace the need for

centralized Centralisation or centralization (see spelling differences) is the process by which the activities of an organisation, particularly those regarding planning and decision-making, framing strategy and policies become concentrated within a particu ...

trackers (servers which co-ordinate the transfer of

metadata Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...

across a BitTorrent network). It largely failed to achieve this goal, and the project was canceled and eXeem's network was shut down by the end of 2005. eXeem was written in C++ using the open source libtorrent library for its BitTorrent functionality.

Overview

eXeem was created by Swarm Systems Inc. which is located in Saint Kitts and Nevis. The company employed Andrej Preston, the founder of

Suprnova.org Suprnova.org was a Slovenia-based website that distributed BitTorrent trackers for various music and video files, computer programs and games. Started in late 2002 by Andrej Preston (known as Slonček, Slovenian for "little elephant") and for a whi ...

, as its spokesperson and public face of eXeem. Five thousand Suprnova.org users were selected to take part in a private beta test of eXeem before the public beta was released on January 21, 2005. eXeem's developers expected to implement the following features: * On-the-fly encryption and decryption * Searching by file

hash Hash, hashes, hash mark, or hashing may refer to: Substances * Hash (food), a coarse mixture of ingredients * Hash, a nickname for hashish, a cannabis product Hash mark *Hash mark (sports), a marking on hockey rinks and gridiron football field ...

* Quality of service features * Proper Universal Plug and Play-support * User comments & ratings, but only when the file has been downloaded (to prevent fake ratings) * Minimum limited upload rate (5 kB/s) to stop leechers.

Criticism of eXeem

Criticism of eXeem arose soon after it debuted and included: * eXeem's for-profit operating model, including support through advertising (much akin to Kazaa) and a public beta that included HTML ads supported by

Cydoor Cydoor is a spyware and adware first detected in 2003. Cydoor software The Cydoor software downloads advertisements from the Cydoor servers, to be displayed in the Cydoor-supported software. It is built as a program integrated into the parent a ...

, which is widely considered to be spyware.P2PNet
, retrieved 2 May 2006 Ads-free versions called ''eXeem Lite

and ''BIT eXeem'' were subsequently released, and eXeem later replaced Cydoor with WhenU from version 0.21 onward. * Closed source code development, in contrast with the open-source model followed by the most popular BitTorrent software, on which eXeem is based. * No initial Linux or Macintosh versions, with no ability to allow third parties to port the code beyond Windows (as eXeem is closed source). * Seacay was released as a Linux Client for the eXeem network when eXeem version 0.21 was released (see screenshot, right )

Network

The eXeem network used super-peers that were used to track torrents (as ordinary BitTorrent trackers). These super-peers were also responsible for maintaining file lists, comments and ratings for part of the files in the network. When a peer that was tracking a torrent was closed or went down, a new peer was assigned to be the tracker for that particular torrent.

External links

eXLite vs eXeem Lite
nbsp;– 2005-02-07 MP3 Newswire article
News article on Slyck
– includes partial transcript of Sloncek interview
Spanish eXeem tutorial
{{File sharing File sharing software

Overview

Criticism of eXeem

Network

See also

References

External links