Robust, error-free, faster file downloads

[Ant Bryan]

Hi,

This isn't specifically tied to web sites, and deals with file
transfers on the net (including FTP/P2P). And, it's most useful when
dealing with large file transfers, where errors are more likely and
expensive when they occur, not small text pages or graphics...

Metalink is an XML format that lists mirrors/P2P, checksums,
signatures, and other metadata that's useful for downloads. Most
metalink clients are download managers which support multi-source
downloads, but other apps like browsers, P2P, and FTP clients support
it too. It'd be great to see a browser like Chrome [1] support it so
more people can make use of it. Mainly open source projects use
metalink, like OpenOffice.org, openSUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu, cURL, etc.

Sample metalink: http://openoffice.mirrorbrain.org/stable/3.1.0/OOo_3.1.0_src_core.tar.bz2.metalink

--
(( Anthony Bryan ... Metalink [ http://www.metalinker.org ]
)) Easier, More Reliable, Self Healing Downloads

[1] http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1751