Are files globally identified in Gnutella...
 

Hi Gnutella Experts,

I was checking out the Gnutella specs, and it seems to me that files are assigned a File_Index as a local identifier on the hosting peer. But Is there a global identifier for files in the network, or is keyword searching the only common property between same files on different hard disks?

Thanks in advance for your help :)

The File Index is fairly useless, it exists merely for historic reasons. Besides keyword searches, some clients implement and allow searches by SHA-1 (urn:sha1). At the moment LimeWire does not support them and it is planned to re-implement this feature more efficiently using a distributed hashtable (DHT).

Almost all search results - except those from poor clients and some spam - carry an urn:sha1 along with them. This is the proper way to download the same file from multiple peers.