Ares Galaxy was an open sourcepeer-to-peer file sharing application that uses its own decentralized supernode/leaf network. It was spun off from the gnutella network in 2002, and is hosted on SourceForge.net. Ares Galaxy has a simple, quick access interface with a built in audio/video viewer. The latest versions also support the BitTorrent protocol and Shoutcastradio stations.
The Ares Network
Ares development began in the middle of 2002 and was originally operating on the gnutella network. Six months later, it switched to its own network with a leaves-and-super nodes architecture. Its protocol is more difficult to identify than that of other popular P2P programs. As a result, Ares is sometimes the only P2P client that works on restricted networks, such as some university campuses. However, it is possible to block, and many organizations are now doing so. From version 1.9.0, data sharing was enabled between two peers behind a firewall. This may be due to mediating peers. The Ares network was, at one time, largely free from fake and corrupt files, unlike others such as FastTrack. However this has changed as its popularity as a file sharing network increased. Since late 2006, several anti-piracy groups, including MediaDefender and BayTSP, working for the RIAA, have started hosting fake MP3 files on Ares that never start downloading. These files are hosted from multiple computers using extremely high-bandwidth connections and therefore appear at the top of the list for any search query that returns them as a result. Some users report that the reliability of establishing connections can be difficult and erratic. From version 1.9.4, Ares included basic support for the BitTorrent protocol. For some changes in the network, Ares is not able to discover new peers by itself. Copying and pasting a special hashlink in the Address bar is needed to import super nodes into Ares.
Hashlinks
Ares has "hashlinks" functionality, it is able to search for peers with files pertaining to a hash and download from them. Ares also uses hashlinks for its chatrooms and its direct chat tool. As from Ares 1.9.6 plaintext hashlinks are supported using the following format:
