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StealthNet 0.8 Build 2007.6.7.1
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This text is intended as a short introduction to StealthNet, a new client 
for the anonymous RShare network.

1. What is StealthNet?
======================
StealthNet is based on the original RShare client and has been enhanced by a 
developer team who consists of Planet Peer community members. In comparison 
with the current RShare client StealthNet offers a lot of new features like 
download resuming (interrupted downloads can be resumed), multilanguage 
support, a search filter for several file types and much more.

2. What are the differences between StealthNet and RShare?
============================================================
StealthNet 0.8 offers a bunch of new features which RShare lacks of:

- Download Resuming (allows resuming of interrupted downloads)

- Optimized bandwidth allocation when upload/download limit is activated

- Shared files and directories are now added or removed in real time

- Redundant downloads from multiple sources have been removed

- Multilanguage support (as of now Englisch and German is supported, French 
and Spanish will follow)

- Search filter for file types

- Pre-defined search for file extensions

In the early stages StealthNet was known as RShare Community Edition (RShare 
CE). However, due to several reasons we had to rename this project to its 
new name StealthNet. This is the reason why the RShare forums on the Planet 
Peer Board (http://board.planetpeer.de)
also have been renamed to RShare/StealthNet.

Both clients are open source and source code is available. They are released 
under the GPL.

3. How does it work?
=================
The RShare network as well as the network protocol were developed by Lars 
Regensburger with strong anonymity/security and acceptable download rates in 
mind. All traffic in the RShare network is routed trough other nodes in the 
network. Furthermore, traffic is encrypted with point-to-point encryption. 
In combination this two techniques provide a very high level of anonymity.

If you want to learn more about RShare/StealthNet and his tech specs the 
Planet Peer Wiki is highly recommended:

a) RShare: http://www.planetpeer.de/wiki/index.php/RShare_%28English%29

b) StealthNet: 
http://www.planetpeer.de/wiki/index.php/StealthNet_%28English%29


4. Advantages over other anonymous P2P networks
=====================================================
As a matter of course StealthNet is not the only client for anonymous file 
sharing. There are a lot of others available, like ANts or MUTE. However, 
StealthNet has one important advantage: In comparison with its competitors 
it is under _active_ development by a developer team and feature requests 
from the community are incorporated.

Some more advantages are:

- Straightforward handling, even for beginners: Install, enable port 
forwarding and you are good to go! Anonymous P2P can´t be easier

- Modern and user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI): Due to a GUI 
similar to eMule users are able to work in no time with StealthNet

- Fast file transfers: As measured by the fact that StealthNet is an 
anonymous P2P client it has great download rates, especially when it comes 
to small files (depends on several factors)

- Has anti-flood-measure in place to avoid network sabotage like flooding 
the network with useless data packets or so

- Command line client for systems with Mono support like Linux, OSX and so 
on is available


5. Why should one use StealthNet instead of eDonkey & co.?
==============================================
That´s pretty simple. StealthNet was primarily developed with strong 
anonymity and security in mind. It offers a great level of protection which 
other networks lacks of. In comparion with regular P2P networks like eDonkey 
it is nearly impossible to locate users who provide content within the 
RShare network. The complete traffic within the network is encrypted by 
approved and popular encryption techniques and downloads are routed through 
several other nodes so nobody can correlate what´s going on between the 
nodes.

6. Downloads
============
If you are now interested in StealthNet and want to give it a try you can 
use the following download locations:

Planet Peer download section (downloads are only available for registered 
users!):

http://board.planetpeer.de/index.php/topic,2907.0.html

Mirrors (free downloads without registration):

http://www.stealthnet.de/download/stealthnet_setup.exe
http://www.stealthnet.de/download/StealthNet2007.6.7.1_Linux.zip

http://home.arcor.de/eroli/StealthNet/stealthnet_setup.exe
http://home.arcor.de/eroli/StealthNet/StealthNet2007.6.7.1_Linux.zip

http://www.screamingfist.de/download/stealthnet_setup.exe
http://www.screamingfist.de/download/StealthNet2007.6.7.1_Linux.zip

7. Support
========
The RShare network is currently growing rapidly day by day and with the 
advent of StealthNet the RShare network gets another boost.
For this reason there is a huge and helpful community which offers technical 
support and much more:

German support board: http://board.planetpeer.de/index.php/board,67.0.html

English support board: http://board.planetpeer.de/index.php/board,68.0.html

Wiki with detailed documentation: http://www.planetpeer.de/wiki

Direct link to StealthNet documentation:: 
http://www.planetpeer.de/wiki/index.php/StealthNet_%28English%29

Direct link to RShare documentation: 
http://www.planetpeer.de/wiki/index.php/RShare_%28English%29

Bug Tracker for error reports: http://www.rs71.net

StealthNet Subversion server: svn://www.rs71.net/rshare

Official RShare web site: http://www.rshare.de (is sometimes offline)