Our FrostWire download has been around for a very long time, much longer than most people think. Would you be surprised if we said it was first released back in 2004? The answer most people would give is yes, so in this article we’re going to go back in time and tell you about the history of the software and what it was like back then, that way you’ll really be able to appreciate what it is today and enjoy what it has to offer.
The first version was actually released as a beta in 2004. It came because at the time, there were threats from huge media corporations and governments to other software of a similar nature, they wanted to put an end to downloading files on the internet. It was developed because at the time, it seemed like the existing products were going to stop working and would back down to the pressure being placed onto them, whereas this tool was able to stand up against them because of the open source and free nature of it which was unheard of at the time. A custom P2P network was used at this time which as you’ll learn, wasn’t great and had to be changed.
This was still very on into the development so it wasn’t very polished and was quite buggy, and because of this it didn’t really take off at the start. In late 2005, the second beta of the tool was released which aimed at fixing some of the problems that the users had pointed out. It was using the Gnutella network which was rather popular at this time but one problem people did experience is slow download speeds and the inability to connect to the network sometimes. It really annoyed users and turned them away which is something that had to be changed, and that’s exactly what the developers of this software did.
Moving quickly forward, over the years more and more updates were released to make it look nicer, improve the GUI and navigation and quicken download speeds. Version 4 is an update that most people remember who have seen it all develop from the start. This is when the torrent protocol was implemented. It was a huge success because it meant instead of the P2P network, users could download much more efficiently and quickly through torrents, and there was a much greater access to files too. Most of the users switched to this and the P2P started to die off, it wasn’t needed anymore.
After this happened, it was pretty obvious that the feature was no longer required. Gnutella was a thing of the past, this new project was evolving rapidly and leading the development into what we see today. It took the brave decision to remove this network from the software which helped to improve the time it took for users to download files as boot up times were quicker and the system was far easier to navigate through. This is a decision that really paid off, it was done in version 5 which is the current version at the moment. Users love the new approach and has meant that millions of new people have come flooding to this piece of software rather than alternatives.
In conclusion, if you’ve read this article you’ll now know that this software has changed from a very small and buggy software which wasn’t really good to anyone into something that tens of millions of people use on a regular basis. Download speeds are incredibly quick, much better than you’ll get from anything else. There really is no reason to use another piece of software when this can provide everything you need, it allows you to get what you want and it can do the job very quickly. We highly recommend you use the download on our website now to get started.