What's New with FileHound?
After three years, a new version has been released. The last version of FileHound, 1.2d, was released in May, 1998, and served remarkably well for a long time. But with the advent of faster computers, higher bandwidth connections, and a changing internet, I felt it was time for an update.
Here's what's new in version 1.3:
- Fixed a bug where large downloads would suck up lots of CPU. This was related to overly paranoid file flushing.
- Changed the "Nuke Everything" menu item to the less fun but more descriptive "Delete Both" (which makes sense in context).
- Updated all the payment and contact information to be current.
- Added support for passive (PASV) FTP.
- Added support for web and ftp-over-web proxies. (No support for SOCKS proxies, though, sorry.)
- Removed "delete log files on retry" option. It will now always delete log files on retry, as otherwise logs could get too big.
- Changed from "bytes per second" monitoring to "kilobits per second" (Kbps), which is a much more common metric.
- Downloads that don't do anything for awhile are marked as STALE, and another queued file is started in addition to it, up to 20 extra files above your normal queue size. If a STALE file is stale for five minutes, it can be canceled and requeued (it will be resumed where it left off), if you wish. These STALE files are put at the end of the queue and only retried when all other files have had their turn.
- Increased performance significantly by not saving the state file so often. It's now saved no more frequently than once a minute, if needed. Of course, this means that if you have a crash, there's more chance filehound could forget something.
- Altered list of maximum connections. Upper limit is now 50, up from 8. CPU power and better operating systems (relatively) permit this change.
- When bandwidth permitted is low, changed the way bits are allocated to files so that they all download gradually rather than one huge GLOMP per file at a time.
- Stability improvements, including proper thread-safe data handling.
Since 1.3 is currently in beta release, this list will grow.
Ready to learn more about FileHound's features?