Metalink is a cross-platform and cross-application open standard/framework/file format for programs that download, including download managers, BitTorrent clients, Web browsers, FTP clients, and P2P programs. For increased convenience, it stores the multiple download locations for a file (FTP/HTTP/P2P) in a single metafile with the extension .metalink. This provides reliability in case one method fails. Some clients also achieve faster download s...
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Metalink is a cross-platform and cross-application open standard/framework/file format for programs that download, including download managers, BitTorrent clients, Web browsers, FTP clients, and P2P programs. For increased convenience, it stores the multiple download locations for a file (FTP/HTTP/P2P) in a single metafile with the extension .metalink. This provides reliability in case one method fails. Some clients also achieve faster download speeds by allowing different chunks/segments of each file to be downloaded from multiple resources at the same time (segmented downloading).
Other features include automatic checksum verification of finished downloads, automatic repair of downloads with errors, listing multiple files to be added to a download queue, and automatic OS/language selection.
Metalink is extensible, and supports listing multiple partial and full file hashes/checksums along with PGP signatures. Most clients only support verifying MD5, SHA-1, & SHA-256, however. Besides...
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