Ezekiel had the great idea a few weeks ago to have a private file sharing circle for empeg users. The theory being that we empegers are likely to have high quality rips of complete albums with ID tags. I would expect the quality and depth of the average empeger's MP3 collection to be much higher than that of the average Napster user.

So I'm now running an OpenNap server on DSL connection. You can connect to it using the regular Napster client and (almost) use it just like you use Napster. But my server doesn't limit you to only 100 search hits!

Here are instructions to connect. The only difference is that you will need another piece of software to "fool" the Napster client into connecting to a server other than one of it's own.

1. Download and install Napigator from http://www.napigator.com
2. Run it and choose File|Manual Connect with these options:
IP Address: 216.254.97.28
PORT: 8888
3. It should start Napster and connect you to my server.

If you are interested in seeing this idea take off and you have a persistant connection, please leave yourself connected so that there remains a decent library of shared files.

Something that will help with Napster in general, and particularly when connecting a server with a small user base like this one is to have your sharing port set up correctly in the Napster client. In the Napster client choose File|Preferences and go to the sharing tab. Note the value of the TCP port. A value of 0 means that you are behind a firewall. If you aren't actually behind a firewall then choose a port (6697 is typical). If you are behind a firewall and can control it's configuration then consider opening up a port for Napster sharing purposes.

The general way peer to peer sharing works is that at least one of the two users participating in a transfer must not be behind a firewall. Two users behind a firewall cannot share. So if you are claiming yourself to be behind a firewall you are limiting who you can share with. In fact, you won't even get search hits for other users who are also behind firewalls. So you don't even know what you might be missing. If you can give a port to share on then you will be able to participate in transfers with any other user and, therefore, get more hits in your searches.

-Dylan