The msgplus sound server is under a constant stress of people uploading and downloading sounds, audio files are pretty large.

The concept sounds same to (de)centralised download network, such as p2p and bittorrent. Pun unintentional, getit? But

How about you make the sounds decentralized and use the sounds server as a tracker?

Less stress on the servers and more bandwidth for downloading/uploading sounds.

Only problem is, would you really want to integrate a bittorrent client with msgplus, and how many people are willing to be constantly seeding there sound files.

I bet some people will be willing though.

Maybe it would work better as a plugin.

This wouldn't work for only sounds, could be neat for other large files such as images and the msgplus download.

edit typo

There's an inmense number of sound files. Actually there is no p2p interaction in any way right now: Nothing in Messenger Plus! connects to another contacts installation. So this is actually the opposite.
Nevertheless, this has been suggested many times and it won't be done, it's not the aim of Plus! and also the decentralised server would have effects on the availability of files and whatnot.

Also the server is kept upgraded so the performance is usually good enough.

it would use people's own internet connections and such as well wouldnt it? i dont think i'd like to be using my bandwidth so people can download sounds... i know it sounds selfish but what if there was a popular sound there? it would take me forever to download anything lol

As with any server it has ups and downs If all else fails and you need to send sounds use Voice Clips in MSN

And I dont think it would be a good idea, as the people who already hate Plus! and go and on and on about it having Spyware and crap, they would then be going on about it being used for illegal file sharing cos it has a bitorrent client built in.

Thank you for the idea but I really prefer continuing to support the whole thing by myself. It costs a lot but it's the only most secure way to do it.

I'm aware that the sound servers have been experiencing difficulties these past few days which is the first time since the beginning of the summer. The reason is a hard disk failure in one of the servers, resulting in more load on the others. With some luck, the issue will be fixed today by admins.