WinMX vs OpenNap Network

[Imagenyuss]

I noticed winMX was cast under the OpenNap Unbrella. I believe this to be a travesty indeed. The last time a population estimate was made for winMX, it was put around two million. Very, very few of these people ever use, connect to, or even know about OpenNaps or their intricacies. Why doesn't winMX have it's own forum section? your guess is as good as mine.

WinMX is one of the best Programs I've ever found, and I use it religiously. Great for a number of things, it is easy to come across countless high quality songs and virusless apps. Many people are rather friendly, but like any thing, a few bad apples often times spoil the lot. Set up your queues before you go to sleep and you'll have something to look forward to when you wake up- your downloads will be complete. Super tweakable, advanced search options, and variety of content makes winMX number one in my book.
But winMX is missing something, and everyone knows it. Community. There is even www.winmxcommunity.com to help solve this problem, but they aren't exactly huge. www.slyck.com has a winMX forum and it gets post every day (which is not something that many of the other program-specific forums can say). alt.music.mp3.winmx is fabulous (and let me give a worthy 'shout-out' to Secret for his tireless efforts to answer every question on that newsgroup) but it gets constantly flooded with... non-winMX related content (aka crap).

I know that there are already quite a few forums and that the UTC forums are set up by the networks programs connect to, so why not the WinMX Peer Network? Especially when you consider that 95% or more of the people on winMX connect esclusively to the WPN and generally know nothing about OpenNaps, which is what winMX is categorized under at UTC atm.

Anyway; I don't want this to become a 'winMX is the best' post so I do recognize that fasttrack as well as eDonkey are very valuable networks that I use regularly.

I appreciate all responces, good or bad. Thanks in advance.
-micah

p.s., this is my second time having to post this thread as it got wiped out when unite update the site. Please vote again.

[Roadblock]

While there are many fans of WinMX here, I am no longer one of them. WinMX was great back around the 2.6 days, but when they improved the client, I ruined it for me. File sharing is just that sharing, not trading. Unless someome will let you in to trade files, you are hopelessly stuck behind a massive queue line, which never seems to go away. While you make a valid point about WinMX not necessrily being an OpenNap client, it doesn't deserve it's own forum at this point either, in my opinion anyway. If enough folks agree, it could be moved in to the "Other P2P" applications forum. :)

Thanks for the input Imagenyuss. :thumbsup:

[Imagenyuss]

I wholeheartedly agree; WinMX was the pwn back in the 2.6 days. But there was sharing back then too, it just wasn't as noticeable because you were only trying to get a file from one person back then, and now everyone is trying to get the same file from fifty people. When everyone was groven on v2.6 you simply wouldn't download from a person that already had fifty in queue. And there might be quite a few people out there with that many and more in their queues. You'd find one kind soul with a decent connect that wasn't trading and you'd merrily download your file. Today, with multisourcing (which I'm a proponent of albeit its havoc that it's wrecked upon winMX), you are just more aware of just how many people have long queues, and this is best realized while looking at your downloads in the transfers section... which also means that you and I are at the end of that line (and thus contributing to the queue problem).

I cannot truthfully say that trading isn't prevelent on the network. Any time it is easy to talk to, browse from, and then start each other's downloads all rolled into one program, there will be trading-no doubt about it. Frontcode gave it's users freedom to infinitely tweak their program, and some people take it too far.

Just also keep in mind that there are far, far more free sharers on winMX. If this was not the case it would simply be impossible to get any file whatsoever. Right now I'm running it in the background (in conjunction with MXmonie as I put leechers in the same lot as traders, but that's another discussion). Because I've filled up my harddrive several times over with music, movies, and shows -all from winMX- I can most emphatically say that it is indeed possible to legitimately download content from winMX.

It is a shame the queues have grown so long. People, in their ignorance, turn down the afs to every five minutes and turn up the aeq to 100. This can only cause problems. But I know that smart and conscientious users like you and me don't play that distructive game. There are easy ways to get around queues.
A guy, a while back told me about this, and I wish I could give him credit for it, but it was a while back and I cannot remember his name. Whenever you connect to the WPN you are connecting to several primaries that are connected to several other primaries and so on. This gives you a general base of people whom you are searching from. When you refresh (unders the networks tab) you are connecting to some of the same primaries you were just connected to, but you're connecting to some new ones also. This gives you a genrally different user base than before, and when you retain the queues you did from the first time you connected and then accumulate more, then you're in business. Note: never connect to people who have queues longer than 20-30, if you do then you've become part of the problem. You want your download to be done as quickly as possible, and so do I! Because as you are downloading, you've made yourself a source for the download of that file for me to connect to.

It's true that connecting and reconnecting generates a great deal of overhead bandwidth, but... so do excessive afs requests.

I believe that winMX is still a valuable resource, and I'm not the only one that thinks this way. Slyck.com has winMX as the no. 1 program to use for songs; I cannot disagree, it is very good for music. But the reason why I started this thread was when I took a gander at some of the other forums that were program specific and thought to myself, 'hey winMX is way bigger than those programs... why doesn't it have its own?' Waste, BT, gnutella, freenet, and at one time the ed2k network was smaller than winMX (I don't know if this is still the case or not).

I know you said outright that it didnt' deserve its own forum, and my zealousness and love for winMX may make me the least bit bias as far as wanting one for it, but when v4 comes out winMX should definitely get it's own if it doesn't merit getting one now.
-micah

[Roadblock]

Well thought and well said Micah, I must admit. I didn't mean to imply that WinMX is without merit. I got many, many music files off of it back in the 2.6 days, and it is still the best ap around to get that one hard to find song. I had heard a while back that the new WinMX would address many of the problems of the current version, includng the queue problem. I hope that turns out to be truth and not hype. We are always willing to listen to reason, and if a sigficiant amount of others believe as you do, adding a seperate forum for WinMX is certainly not out of the question. We always adapt the forums as needed. ;)

[Imagenyuss]

Originally posted by Roadblock
I had heard a while back that the new WinMX would address many of the problems of the current version, includng the queue problem. I hope that turns out to be truth and not hype. me too
keep hope alive
-micah

[Imagenyuss]

Read the new slyck interview here (http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=216).

[Imagenyuss]

this is definitely the most lively post EVER.

[Imagenyuss]

I am :type: to the new winMX forum. I may be gone for a while.