Links to identical and alternate resources : Metalink

Hello,

Metalinks may be relevant to your discussion, as they are for (multiple)
links to identical and alternate resources.

It is an XML file format with mirror/P2P, checksum, language,
OS/architecture and other metadata. Information is read from the .metalink
file and filtered by the download client (by which OS or language version of
the file the person wants to download, or by mirror location).

The multiple links increase reliability and allow for easy segmented
downloads which increase speed. Checksums are automatically verified when
the download completes.

Here's an example part of a .metalink:

    <file name="example.ext">
    <os>Windows-x86</os>
    <language>en</language>
    <verification>
      <hash type="md5">example-md5-hash</hash>
    </verification>
    <resources>
      <url type="ftp" location="uk"
preference="90">ftp://ftp.example2.com/example.ext</url>
      <url type="http" location="us"
preference="90">http://www.example1.com/example.ext</url> 
    </resources>

Metalinks are in use by OpenOffice.org, openSUSE, and a number of Linux and
BSD distributions for ISO downloads. There are clients available for Mac,
Unix, and Windows.

(( Anthony Bryan
 )) Metalink [ http://www.metalinker.org ]

Received on Wednesday, 15 November 2006 18:39:06 UTC