Metalink is an open specification that harnesses the speed and power of peer to peer networking, FTP, and HTTP with a single click.
For users and content providers, Metalink makes things simpler, faster, and more reliable.
- If one link or server fails, download automatically continues using another.
- One Click Downloads. Easy user experience.
- Minimizes and distributes traffic so individual servers are under less strain.
- Downloads are verified for enhanced reliability.
- Extremely fast download speeds.
- Automatic error recovery and repair of corrupted downloads.
- Combines FTP and HTTP with optional Peer-to-peer (P2P, shared bandwidth).
- Easily add multiple files to a download queue.
- No Single Point of Failure (SPOF) like FTP or HTTP URLs. More fault tolerant.
- Transparent usage where people can get the benefits of Metalink without even knowing they're using it.
| 30 Aug : | Internet Draft describing the Metalink format has been submitted to the IETF. |
| 30 Aug : | MirrorBrain provides Metalinks for OpenOffice.org. |
| 29 Aug : | Daniel Stenberg (cURL project) Podcast on FTP vs HTTP. Other podcasts: Appupdater & Metalink, & cURL. |
| 23 Aug : | Metalink Checker (Cross Platform, Open Source) is a command line Python Metalink downloader that also checks mirrors. |
| 23 Aug : | Offline Explorer (Windows) includes Metalink support. |
| 15 Aug : | aria2 0.15.2 (Unix/Win), the high speed command line download utility with Metalink support, is out! Try out aria2fe, a friendly GUI front end, while you're at it. |
| 11 Aug : | Mini Downloader, part of the Metalink tools, is a standalone downloader of Metalinks. The first release focuses on downloading OpenOffice.org. |
| 29 Jul : | KGet 2.1, part of KDE 4.1, supports Metalink. Check the release announcements for ways to try it out! |
| 06 Jun : | DownThemAll! 1.0.3 (Firefox extension) is out! This is the easiest way to try out Metalink! |