I've been a P2P fan since the early days of Napster/Gnutella/Kazaa.  I'm really happy to see Fopnu bringing P2P back after the demise of eMule's most popular servers (Razorback/etc.) and the stagnation of Gnutella/Aries/etc.  As torrenting is slowly dying, it is important to have a good decentralized way to share files.

I'm happy to say that Fopnu has allowed me to find and download some more obscure TV shows/etc. with impressive speed and reliability despite using UDP over TCP.  The community has been very helpful.  The bootstrap process is seamless.  I see a lot aspects of KAD and WinMX which is nice.  The interface is uncluttered and easy to navigate.  It seems to have the right balance of function, usability, and resiliency.

Issues:

I experienced an instant BSOD (blue screen crash) in Windows 7 when running the Fopnu 64-bit Windows installer from a network drive within VirtualBox.  The same installer ran fine after copied to the local drive.  Might have been an isolated glitch; I have not tried to reproduce it.

Fopnu by default did not bind its UDP listening port to my VPN virtual adapter but instead to the LAN gateway 192.168.1.1.  This is not a bug; however it would be nice if Fopnu could alert the user to try a different adapter binding if there's a UDP socket error.  uPNP is a security risk and many will have it disabled.  Decent VPN client software will block direct access to the Internet.  Non-technical users could benefit from this.

Suggestions:

When downloading, have Fopnu download from incomplete sources as well as completed sources, like Bittorent does.  These incomplete sources can be used when multi-source downloading to improve download speeds.

Incorporate a way to rate files 1 to 3 stars (3 star being the best).  These ratings can be broadcast to other nodes to add a trust system.  1 star for fake/bad quality.  2 star for minor issues.  3 star for good quality/trust.  It would also be amazing to have a way to leave comments for files distributed with the star ratings.  This could provide the benefit of Bittorent tracker forums without the need for centralized websites.

Add multi-tabbed search like Soulseek has.  Being forced to remove the previous search is aggravating.

Have Fopnu return alternate results for search results based on file hash. eMule has done with and it's very helpful to avoid downloading unwanted content.  Some unscrupulous individuals will take illegal content and rename it as something else.  In the search results, if Fopnu shows the other filenames found on the network for that same hash, this can be avoided.

Maintain a local history (logs) of searches, uploads, and downloads, configurable in the options (level of detail, retention time, etc.).

Do not clear the completed uploads from the uploads section in the transfers window.  It's very helpful to see the completed uploads to find out what people are downloading and what is popular.

Add simple IRC-style commands to the chat channels to allow auto-posting, etc.  Example: "/timer 60 Hi I have some great stuff" can auto-post "Hi I have some great stuff" every 60 seconds.


Thanks to the developers of this wonderful software and network.  It's good to see people interesting in the spirit of open, free file sharing without the hassles of needing closed tracker invites, dealing with shady websites, or relying on centralized servers.  I hope this gains popularity and content.  I'll be supporting you and donating.

did you send in the error report? if it happens again be sure to send in the error report. that is the fastest and best way to get crashes fixed.


Some of your suggestions have already been implemented:

fopnu does this. if it finds another user sharing a file you are downloading, it adds that user to your download.


fopnu does this. right-click the search button to get the 'new window' option


fopnu does this. you can turn off auto-clearing of complete downloads and/or idle uploads if you want.

on the transfers tab click the remove button and go to 'auto-clear'. there you can set it clear the downloads and/or uploads every so many minutes or never.

Well, the "New window" thing is far worse than multiple tabs, it's not very intuitive if it's hidden there on a right click menu.

Apart from what appears on OP, I think these might be good:
-Tick all options from search by default: Audio, Video, Images, Text, Other. So it can find a bit of everything, leave the filters to whoever wants to use them. By default Audio and Video are ticked.
-Add stats such as Ammount of content uploaded, Ammount of content downloaded, Ratio, Number of unique IPs you have connected to, Most shared files...
-Set autoclear uploads/downloads to Off by default.
-Add a button of "Use link" on the search function (besides the big Search button), right now it only appears by right clicking the menus and people might miss it.

Fopnu is ok It's just the bastards that use it is the problem

All these cunts sat there with gig after gig of files waiting for some twat to try and get something they want from them....What does the first thing these "Sharers" do = They throttle the upload speed........

Thottle uploads speed... ummm if you cant beat em join em.....Most youll get frfrom me is 8kb  just like the old dailup days...