Laptops Arena

If you are seeking to make your downloads in an easier and faster way, then you might be looking for Metalink. Of course, some may say the BitTorrent is the only one available in the field, but if we consider deeper we notice that for casual downloads BitTorrent doesn’t lift up to the users’ expectations, especially in case of OpenOffice.org or Firefox downloading. The problem with direct downloads is that they put the server bandwidth into too much effort and finally you realize that maybe it would have been better if you had used from the beginning the FTP.

Metalink is a simple XML-based file format which chooses the best server in order to provide a safe download. Its way of choosing is based on knowing how to locate the server and to determine the preference for that download option. Both these features are set in Metalink file itself enabling sys admins to stimulate users to perform the download from a local and fastest server. Switching to Metalink won’t necessary mean that you loose BitTorrent’s features, since Metalink incorporates some of BitTorrent’s features (such as checksumming) though it is not using BitTorrent.

As to downloading large files, Metalink presents some advantages in the case of PGP key signing when you need to be sure that the downloading comes from that specific person, a segmented downloading is made allowing to download the file from various sources, all at the same time. With parts belonging to their source, you can fill up the bandwidth, slowing down not even one server, since Metalink divides the load across multiple options. At present there is a wide range of software working with Metalink, for instance a user can use Aria2, KGet and wxDownload Fast on Linux, as all of them support Metalink feature.

A DownThem All extension of cross-platform belonging to Firefox supports also Metalink and requests have been made to Mozilla to add Metalink support as a standard; it seems that in the future Metalink will be incorporated into the core browser. But whether some realize it or not, Metalink is present in more place that anyone could think because it is acting kind of “in the shadow of the highlights”. Users know when they are given a Metalink file when looking at the Metalink extension, which is “.metalink”, this one being tacked on the name of the file you needed to download. Clicking on it you might get a combination that depending on how you have configured the Metalink software.

Metalink can be found on lots of distros to distribute their ISO files such as: 64 Studio, Belenix, Fedora, OpenSUSE, PCLinuxOS, Damn Small Linux, Sabayon Linux and Ubuntu. So whenever you are in a hurry and hate waiting for a downloading, Metalink is the path to faster downloads.