KCeasy Review

Name: KCeasy
Homepage: www.KCeasy.com
Cost: Free
Recommended: Yes

In October 2001 FastTrack had 689,176 users. 610,623 people using either Morpheus or Kazaa and 78,553 using iMesh. At the time this was the biggest filesharing network in existence. The whole idea behind filesharing is the free exchange of ideas and information. For P2P to be ruled by his for profit, closed source spyware infested triad was no less than an abomination. While projects like Gnutella and ED2K passively challenged FastTrack’s domination, 1 project’s offensive started with an invasion. On October 5th 2001, the filesharing world received a gift.

giFT started out as an open source daemon to FastTrack. Not a program, a core for other programs to be built on. anubis3 and the giFT team reverse engineered the FastTrack protocol and built a new engine. But their quest to out do FastTrack didn’t end there. giFT also had their own network, OpenFT. Reverse engineering FastTrack gave giFT an insight into P2P networks. Like OpenNap, OpenFT aimed to be an open source, free version of the popular network. Reverse engineering FastTrack and building OpenFT were daunting tasks. But the giFT team still had time to review the Gnutella consortium’s docs and put together a modest Gnutella plugin.

giFT, there’s a few interpretations of the name. “g” meaning GNU or GPL. iFT stands for a few things. Internet File Transfer, a nice simple explanation. Interface to FastTrack, intent on breaking into the private network. My favorite is “Isn’t FastTrack.” I’ve got no clue why “gi” isn’t capitalized.

But what good is a filesharing core if there’s no GUI? For the Mac, Poisoned was created. For Linux, Apollon took the lead. For windows, giFT admin mkern started KCeasy. Before I go any further let me explain the name “KCeasy”. Some people think it means Kazaa Connect Easy, that’s wrong. mkern didn’t care about the name of the program, so he used an old Dos program that randomly puts letters together. “KCeasy” was 1 of the results. To my knowledge, no KCeasy user has ever described the program as “easy”. I know I don’t.

May 24th 2002, KCeasy’s SourceForge page showed up. A public beta followed. KCeasy was designed to look just like Kazaa. Web browser using IE drivers. Search, Transfers, Library, Media and a chat feature. KCeasy didn’t see the success of Poisoned or Apollon, at first. P2P programs for Windows were and are a dime a dozen. KCeasy was buggy and the giFT core was too. But development continued.

Fast forward to April 17th 2004, KCeasy 0.12 was released. KCeasy was gaining some popularity. Sharman felt threatened by the presence of a windows FastTrack client that they couldn’t control. They sent a cease and desist letter to KCeasy. mkern had 2 choices, fight Sharman for access to the FastTrack network, or remove FastTrack support. At this time Kazaa had been the main stage in the P2P world for a long time. But names like “FastCrap” and “FakeTrack” had started to pop up. While FastTrack was still the biggest network, he certainly wasn’t the best. mkern decided to drop support for FastTrack. However, the giFT FastTrack plugin is still available as a 3rd party tool and can easily be installed in KCeasy.

January 2005, mkern and hex revealed the giFT Ares plugin. They had reverse engineered the Ares protocol and built a giFT plugin for the network. This plugin added Ares support to all giFT powered clients. At the time, Ares was closed source and only shared their code with WAREZ and Filecroc for a price. Ares never gave any sign that they were against the giFT Ares plugin.

giFT Ares picked a bad time to join the Ares network. In February 2005 all Ares clients had trouble connecting. Ares founder Alberto Treves describedthe problems as growing pains. For a time he was releasing new versions weekly. When version 1.8.1 Build 2965 came out, it was incompatible with the older Ares clients. It took giFT a few months, but they eventually they made their way onto the new Ares network. However, the newer version of the Ares network didn’t take users online stats. KCeasy’s forums had several threads asking why Ares only has 2 users online. Since the giFT plugins were all a bit behind pace with dedicated clients, the giFT stats were never very reliable. So mkern decided to remove all user online stats from the program. Even OpenFT’s.

Filesharing is about teamwork. Using KCeasy will make you a part of 3 teams(plus OpenFT), but you’re not going to be nominated for MVP. The FastTrack plugin is at version 0.8.9. It hasn’t been updated since January 3rd 2005. By default it doesn’t upload to FastTrack. It only shares 50 files randomly picked from your shared folder, it can’t be a supernode on the network. The Gnutella plugin is at version 0.0.10.1. It hasn’t been updated since July 24th 2005. It can’t be an ultrapeer and it can’t share partial files. The Ares plugin is at version 0.3.0. Its last update was February 25th 2006. The only problem with it is it can’t be a supernode on the network.

OpenFT is the giFT only network. OpenFT is at 0.2.1.6. It hasn’t been updated since May 7th 2005. But it doesn’t really matter if the OpenFT network development is a little slow. The people making it are the ones setting the bar. The giFT network on its own is a fine filesharing method. Only 10,000 users, but quality is better than quantity, right? OpenFT’s population comes from KCeasy, Apollon and Poisoned users. These people aren’t computer n00b’s. They can’t be, giFT and those GUI’s are too complicated for new users. They’re not going to be stupid enough to share a virus or leave a screeching MP3 in their shared folder. To say OpenFT is completely free of fakes is a grand statement. One I’m too afraid to make. But one I would never challenge. I’ve never had a bad download from OpenFT.

The giFT core hasn’t been updated since July 24th 2005. But it is stable enough to use. Proof of that is in the clients that use it. For windows, KCeasy is of course the leader. Another 100% original GUI was giFTWin32, but it’s now dead. FilePipe, TorrentSearcher and Peanuts are all KCeasy clones worked on by people who have faith in the giFT core. TrustyFiles in the past has stolen giFT code and worked it into their program.

So what’s so good about KCeasy itself? OpenFT, Gnutella and Ares come standard. FastTrack is 3rd party. Gnutella + Ares + FastTrack equals between 4 and 5 million users. Putting that in perspective, ED2K has under 4 million. Users or sources is what it’s all about in the P2P world. Look at eMule. They’ve built source exchange and Kad to find more users. eDonkey2000 has built horde and Overnet to find more sources. Shareaza built G2 to make smoother transfers between Shareaza users. BitTorrent clients have DHT networks to find more sources. The catch with all these protocol extensions is that those sources could’ve been found right after the initial search. With KCeasy you can search 1 network for sources. Start a download from that network. Then the program will search the other networks for more sources. No shortcuts, just multiple connections on multiple ports to multiple nodes. KCeasy is a work horse, although if you were to look at its RAM usage you wouldn’t know it.

Searching for files on KCeasy is pretty much the same as any other program. It does lack some features like title, artist, file size, etc… But you can choose which networks you want to search, you have a check box for each network right under the search box. How many times have you heard that FastTrack is full of fakes? Well with KCeasy you can first search a relatively clean network like Ares or Gnutella for a file, start the download and then KCeasy will search FastTrack for that specific file. It’s the safest way to access the FastTrack network.

On the down side, these networks are all separately developed for a reason. The developers have different ideas as to the best way to run a network. Therefore the networks aren’t 100% compatible with each other. This really comes into play with the hashing systems for each network. OpenFT uses MD5, FastTrack uses UUhash, Gnutella uses SHA1 and Ares also uses SHA1. You can download from Gnutella users and Ares users at the exact same time because they both use SHA1. However the other networks must be used 1 at a time. As an example, if you have 1 source on FastTrack and 2 sources on OpenFT, the download will only come from OpenFT.

When you start KCeasy for the first time it’ll automatically download node lists and ip ban lists for all available networks. All P2P programs do this in 1 way or another but KCeasy shows it to you as it happens. It shows it to you because chances are you’ll have to do it manually at some point or another. The giFT plugins aren’t perfect so if a network’s ultrapeers or supernodes shift to a new set of users, KCeasy’s ip lists won’t help you connect anymore. Manually downloading the node lists is easy, click KCeasy > Update Ban Lists and Node files. KCeasy will do the rest. You should only update networks that you can’t connect to. These node lists are hosted on a server and every time you download them you’re costing that server bandwidth.

Another factor in connecting to the networks is firewalls. All P2P programs require a listen port for incoming connections(unless they use UPnP but that’s a whole different story). KCeasy needs several open ports to connect to the various networks. To configure your ports you have to manually edit .conf files located in \KCeasy\giFT\conf\. There’s a folder for each network, inside the folders is a .conf file. These .conf files are just .txt files, they can be edited with Notepad. By default OpenFT uses 1215 and 1216. FastTrack uses 1214. Gnutella uses 6881-6889. Ares uses 37964. You can either open those ports in your software firewall and router or edit the .conf files to your liking.

KCeasy is software with ads, but don’t dare call it adware. The KCeasy startpage comes with Ads By Google. Every time you click one of those ads, 2 cents goes to KCeasy, however Google only writes the check once the total hits $100. Every cent benefits KCeasy development in some way. The startpage also gives you links to the KCeasy website for questions and help. It acts as a filesharing news portal by showing news stories from P2Pnet and Slyck. It’d be nice if you could change the startpage to any page you want, but it’s nothing to freak out over.

With Microsoft’s release of Service Pack 2 came the half open TCP configuration. This was especially devastating to programs like KCeasy which need many connections to other computers. KCeasy has a built in patcher that opens Windows up to more connections when the program is open and then sets the connections back to normal when it’s closed.

Development of giFT and KCeasy is in fact slow. Multi-network clients never look good in the eyes of dedicated client developers. But until everyone can agree on a blueprint for the best filesharing method, programs like KCeasy will exist. Try it. If you ever feel you could have a better connection to the network if you were using a dedicated client, take comfort in the fact that if more people used giFT eventually more developers would sign up. With more developers, the plugins would get better. When that happens, there will be nothing stopping the plugins from being just as good as the dedicated clients.

Download KCeasy | Download the FastTrack plugin here | Discuss this review here