Share EX2 Guide - Set up and downloading

Share is a Japanese peer-to-peer file sharing client and network for Windows, based on a similar model to the English program Freenet and Japanese Winny. Share is perhaps best known as a network where fans of new anime, Jdramas, manga, movies and adult videos gather. For new files with multiple sources, Share is one of the fastest clients out there. Share allows you to copy filenames to the clipboard for checking in search engines, and if you have the hash for a file, you do not need to know how to read Japanese.

You can download the latest version of Share, EX2, from Share P2P or P2P ファイル共有ソフトノード登録所. You can download English locale and hint files to replace the Japanese ones from Serika's Share web site on uguu.org.

Create a Share folder in Program Files, unzip Share EX2 to there, and then replace the locale and hint files. If you get a runtime error when starting the program, run msconfig, untick your antivirus and firewall applications, restart Windows, start Share EX2, and then turn your antivirus and firewall back on.

Next, you should set up your cluster words. Every Share user chooses up to five cluster words, and these help decide which nodes Share connects to. Click on Settings, Clusters, type in a cluster word, and click Add. The most popular cluster words are AV, DVDISO, アニメ (anime), アプリ (application), 映画 (movie), 無修正 (uncensored), iso, ドラマ (drama) and コミック (comics). If you choose five of these, that should get you connected to a wide range of computers. You can always change your cluster words later when looking for videos with a different theme. Click in the boxes next to the five you want, and then click OK.

Next, Settings, Profile, Settings, type in a Nickname and Password, and click "change key." This will set your ID. On the Network tab, input your upstream and downstream limits. You have to set both for a minimum of 50KB/s, but actually the main thing this seems to affect is the reported speed in the nodes window. Share has no internal bandwidth throttle.

On the same dialog box, choose a port number in the 10000 to 65000 range, and set your software or router firewall to allow TCP connections in and out for that same port. If you are using the Windows XP SP2 firewall, click on Start, Settings, Control Panel, Windows Firewall, Exceptions and then Add Port, ie. the same number as you typed into Share - Settings - Network. EX2 is TCP only, so you don't have to worry about UDP. You can leave Performance, Action and Quota the way they are. Hit OK.

Next, you need a node list. A node is just the encrypted IP address of a computer running Share. You actually need only one active node, and then Share will automatically download the rest, and store them in the nodes.db file. There are node lists at: Benri-tool, P2P ファイル共有ソフトノード登録所 and P2P Node Terminal. Be sure to use EX2 nodes if you are running the TCP version. The UDP version NT2 has its own nodes. Copy, and paste the nodes into Notepad, and save the file as nodes.txt into the Share folder. On the Nodes tab, click "Add node," then "Load from file," browse to your nodes.txt file, and select it. Click "Add" and then "Close." Don't connect yet.

In Windows Explorer, in the Share folder, create two more folders, one called "Cache" and the other called "Download." Back in Share, switch to the Folders tab, click "Add folder," and add your new Cache and Download folders, setting a minimum quota of 4GBs for cache. For "Upload," browse to, and select the folder where the files you want to upload are stored. You can choose to share anything from a single file on up, but the more files you share, the longer it will take for Share to check them all.

Once you are all ready, restart Share, and then on the Nodes screen, click connect. It will start trying each of the nodes in your list till it finds an active one, and then start downloading others, and checking them too. It may take a while for it to find nodes with clusters related to your interests, but once the Log tab tells you that you are connected, and your Global IP has been resolved, you can start setting up triggers to find the files you are interested in.

Next, you need to set up some triggers for files you want to download. You can search for Share hashes in the online database Share ファイル照会DB(試). If you have the hash for the file you want, click on the Triggers tab, "Add Trigger" and then paste the hash value into the Hash field, leaving "Add to DB only" unticked. You might want to set a minimum file size of 100 MBs to screen out text dummies or a maximum of 2000 MBs if you want to exclude ISOs. Click "Add." As soon as Share finds the file, it will automatically add it to your Download window, and start downloading. Share can only search for a limited number of triggers at a time, so don't create too many.

If you don't have a hash for the file you want, you can set up a trigger to get Share to add relevant search results to your DB. First, on the Triggers tab, click "Add Trigger," type words from the title into the Keyword blank, untick the "Delete matching query triggers" box, and add a tick to the "Add to DB only" box. Now Share will search the DB of all the nodes it connects to for that keyword, adding any matching filenames and hashes to your own DB. If you want to run an auto-download trigger, make sure you delete any "DB only" trigger with the same keywords. Otherwise, Share will just add the filename to the DB rather than starting the download.

Once you have added results to your DB, click on the Queries tab, and search your DB. If you can't read the file name, right click on the file, choose "Copy file name," and paste it into the text box on the Google Translate, select Japanese to English. Orange files are the easiest to download, white is neutral, light blue are the ones you are already downloading, and dark blue the ones in your upload folder. Red files are thought to be fakes. If you find a file you want, right-click on it, and choose "Add to Download." Occasionally, Share will refuse to add a download from either a trigger or the Queries window. If it's a trigger, run another Search in queries. If it's in Queries, set up a trigger for the hash. It usually works the second time.

In the Download window, you can follow the progress of your downloads. Order indicates the number of people in the queue ahead of you, and Status tells you the number of pieces that Share has managed to locate. Highest priority is given to the file numbered 0, but you can increase or decrease the priority by right-clicking on the file. The Tasks window shows you what files are being downloaded at the moment. When the download is complete, Share will convert it from Cache into a playable video, post a note in Tasks, and it will show up in your Download folder.