Frequently Asked Questions

How is Dijjer pronounced?

Dijjer rhymes with "fridge-er"

I'm really new to this. How do I use Dijjer on my site?

If you have a very large file that lots of people are downloading and you want to save bandwidth, just put http://www.dijjer.org/get/ before the link. It almost sounds too easy doesn't it? The way it works is that when somebody clicks on that link it takes them to a page on Dijjer.org. That page figures out if they have Dijjer or not, and if they do they just start downloading the file from your site using Dijjer (which saves you bandwidth). If they don't have Dijjer, they'll be lead through the installation process, and then they can come back and download the file using Dijjer. From then on, they'll just click as usual.

I want to use Dijjer to download stuff. How do I do that?

Try downloading one of the videos in the sidebar. It will tell you how to get Dijjer and you'll never need to do it again.

Where can I get help using Dijjer?

You can get help using Dijjer either through:

The dijjer-user mailing list or the #dijjer IRC channel on irc.freenode.net

Lots of p2p software has spyware and adware. Does Dijjer?

No way. Dijjer is free software.

What's "Free Software"?

"Free Software", or sometimes "free and open source software", is a program that has the source-code (the programming instructions) openly published and available for anyone to use to make new programs. Firefox is a famous example of free software.

Do I have to do mess with my firewall or router to make Dijjer work better?

No. Lots of p2p apps (including Bittorrent) make you forward ports to get good performance. But Dijjer uses state-of-the-art "NAT2NAT" techniques to get the most out of your internet connection without any reconfiguration.

So downloads happen in my browser, but they come from a p2p network? How's that?

Dijjer runs something like a fake website on your computer, accessible only to you. So Dijjer links point your browser to this address, and your browser thinks it's getting the file from the web when really it's coming from Dijjer. Dijjer, in turn, gets parts of the file from the original website and most of it from other Dijjer users.

How do I use Dijjer to save bandwidth on my podcast?

To use Dijjer in an RSS feed, just format all the links in the enclosures . People will need to install Dijjer to receive that feed, so you should probably link to the Dijjer download page from your site.

How do I uninstall Dijjer?

In Microsoft Windows to to "Add or Remove Programs" in your Control Panel, click on Dijjer and click on Remove.

If you use Apple's OSX, first shut down Dijjer by opening the status page, clicking the Confirm check box, and clicking on Shutdown. Now obtain the OSXGNU uninstaller from here, and use it to uninstall the Dijjer files. Note that we are working on a more convenient uninstall mechanism for Mac users.

Is Dijjer centralised?

There are currently some centralised components to Dijjer, but none that are fundamental to its operation. For example, users are encouraged to link to Dijjer through the http://dijjer.org/get/ relay, however this is just to provide a good user experience for users that don't already have Dijjer. If you are comfortable to assume that the user already has Dijjer, you can link directly to a file through Dijjer by prefixing its URL with http://127.0.0.1:9115/, which will bypass our website.

Dijjer nodes also rely on a small number of "seed" peers, through which new Dijjer peers can assimilate into the Dijjer network. These are not essential however, you can (through use of Dijjer's command line interface) instruct Dijjer to assimilate through any Dijjer peer that isn't behind a firewall. In the future Dijjer nodes will collect a list of such peers to alleviate our peers of this burden.

Unlike software such as BitTorrent, Dijjer requires no centralised co-ordination of a file download, this is handled by an entirely decentralised and scalable algorithm..

How do I use Dijjer with iPodder?

If you subscribe to a feed that uses Dijjer, all you need to do is download and install Dijjer. From iPodder's perspective it's the same as downloading podcasts from a webpage.

I'm not downloading anything yet my cache is still growing, why?

One of Dijjer's benefits is its "pre-emptive caching". This means that even users not actively downloading files from Dijjer will still contribute back to the Dijjer network, improving Dijjer's performance for everyone.

Is Dijjer legal?

Dijjer is designed to fall under the "System Caching" exemption of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and as such, should be perfectly legal in the US and other countries with similar laws.

Is Dijjer useful for copyright infringement?

Dijjer will only download a file if it's available on a website. So for corporate copyright holders, policing Dijjer is exactly the same as policing websites.

Then what's the goal of Dijjer?

In practice, most artists have to give up their copyrights to big corporations to reach a large audience. We hope Dijjer will change that, by letting musicians and filmmakers reach millions directly, without handing over their copyrights to anybody.

Is there a Firefox plug-in?

Glad you asked! Dijjeridoo is a Dijjer plugin for Firefox, right-click on any link for the option to download it through Dijjer.