[Kget] metalinks

[anthony l. bryan]

> it seens to be great. but where we can get the metalinks?
> I mean there are a public server to get a specific metalink?

Thanks, Manolo.

I am in the process of setting up a site that collects Metalinks. Right now
tho, they are all made by hand (copy & pasted from sites). (An automated
tool would be easier, someone is working on one but it is not finished yet).
Once more clients support it, links could be placed on a project's main
download page of course.

For OpenOffice.org & other places it is rather time consuming to collect/use
these links (the old fashioned way) for multi-threaded downloading. You go
to the site, then have to browse through the mirrors. The Fedora mirrors
site ( http://fedora.redhat.com/Download/mirrors.html ) is a good example.
Say you want the DVD ISO, not all sites carry that, so you have to check em
out individually.

I made an .AVI screen capture of Metalink in action. It is about 72 MB. I
tried to convert it to divx but no luck.

http://rapidshare.de/files/14470995/metalink_demo.avi.html (click FREE then
wait 60 sec)

This is a really boring demo, watching something download. It takes a few
seconds to process the Metalink before the download starts. The important
part is, you click one link & all the mirrors are known to GetRight (it
shows the Mirror Manager), no searching or user interaction is required. It
maxes out my bandwidth (Cable modem) at about 750-770k because of the
multiple segments.

ant