I understand generally how gnutella works but i dont understand how you get yourself connected to that first computer.
ie, when you start up a gnutella program how do you know which computers are connected to the gnutella network and which one to connect to?

Thanks

Several way to do that :

- A cache which lists all your recent connections and try them
- A pong server which everyone can reach then publish their IP and retrieve others IP
- Gnucleus way : using a cache room in a particular IRC server in the same way (publish my IP retrieve others servent in need of a connection IP) .

Don t know any other yet.

Oovermars

If nothing else helps, you can always ask a friend who is already connected to tell you his IP address and the listening port of his client

Hostcache... how do I access them?
http://gnutellaforums.com/showthread...&threadid=5807