Easier file distribution with XML (Mirrors, P2P, & checksums)

["anthony l. bryan" <albryan@comcast.net>]

Hello,

I posted about Metalink a few months ago. It's an XML file read by download
managers, with useful information for segmented downloading, P2P, &
automatic checksum verification.

Here is an example file. A real one would have multiple ftp & http <url>s...

<metalink version="3.0" xmlns="http://www.metalinker.org/";>
<files>
  <file name="filename.ext">
  <verification>
    <hash type="md5">example-md5-hash</hash>
  </verification>
  <resources>
    <url type="ftp">ftp://ftp.example.com/filename.ext</url>
    <url type="http">http://www.example2.com/filename.ext</url> 
    <url type="bittorrent>http://www.example.com/filename.ext.torrent</url>
    <url type="magnet"/>
    <url type="ed2k"/>  
  </resources>
  </file>
</files>
<metalink>

If you would like to try it out, you can download GetRight 6 BETA (Windows)
at http://www.getright.com/beta6.html
(We'd like to eventually have more clients on other platforms, hopefully
free software).

For more info & a short video of Metalink in action see
http://www.metalinker.org/ . The OpenOffice.org & Fedora Core 5 metalinks
are good for testing as they have many mirrors.

Thanks,
Anthony Bryan