Xunlei Limited (Chinese: ??; pinyin: Xùn Léi; literally: "thunderbolt") is a Chinese multinational technology company and an online service provider founded in 2003. The subsidiary of Xunlei Limited, Shenzhen Xunlei Networking Technologies, Co., Ltd. (Chinese: ??????????) was formerly known as Sandai Technologies (Shenzhen) Inc. and changed its name to Shenzhen Xunlei Networking Technologies, Co., Ltd. in May 2005. In April 2014, Xunlei received an investment from a Chinese electronics company Xiaomi of $200 million. On 24 June 2014, it went public on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange, raising just shy of $88 million, and offering sold 7.315 million American depositary shares (ADS) at $12. According to the annual ranking of China's top 100 internet companies which release by Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the Chinese government, Xunlei occupied the 42th place in 2017's ranking.
The main product of Xunlei Limited is the Xunlei download manager and Peer-to-peer software developed by, supporting HTTP, FTP, eDonkey, and BitTorrent protocols. As of 2010, it was the most commonly used BitTorrent client in the world. In October 2017, the company announced that it will transform itself into a blockchain company, and release a blockchain-based product named OneThing Cloud. OneThing Cloud users get LinkToken(one kind of virtual currency) for contributing their bandwidth to the Xunlei's Content Delivery Network.
Xunlei ltd. announced that its board of directors has appointed Mr. Lei Chen, who is a former Tencent cloud computing unit leader, as its Chief Executive Officer of the Company and Director of the Board on June 29, 2017. Mr. Sean Zou, founder of the Company, resigned as Chief Executive Officer and continue to serve as the Chairman of the Board, with specific focus on Xunlei's growth strategy and initiatives related to products and technological innovation in cloud computing including AI, as well as strategic investments.
Video Xunlei
Products
The Xunlei download manager, generally called Xunlei, is the flagship product of Xunlei Corporation, which also supports Xunlei Kankan, a video-on-demand website, and other desktop software. Xunlei is the most popular download software in China. Since 2017, Xingyu CDN has become another important product of the corporation.
Xunlei
Through Xunlei, users can access a large portion of the files available on the Internet. Xunlei uses a technology called P2SP to speed up download. Features in Xunlei includes a built-in browser, changeable skins, cloud storage, "offline" downloading, hi-speed downloading (only available for members), email service and more. According to iResearch's report, as of March 2014, the cloud accelerates monthly active users of Xunlei reach 142 million(including approximately 5.2 million paid member), and has a market share of 81.4% in the cloud accelerated products and services market in China.
Xunlei is accompanied by a family of products including Xunlei 9, Mac Xunlei, Xunlei VIP Edition, and Xunlei Express Edition. As adware, Xunlei products feature banner advertisements, which can be disabled if logged in as a vip user.
Nebula CDN
Nebula(Chinese: ??; literally: "asteroid field") CDN is a CDN product which launched by Shenzhen Onething Technologies Co., Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Xunlei, in June 2015. Different from traditional CDN, Nebula CDN make use of idle bandwidth that share by users. In order to participate in this plan, users can buy a network device(ZhuanQianBao or OneThing Cloud) from Xunlei. In return, Xunlei gives the user real or virtual currency as a reward. As the civil broadband prices far below the broadband prices for enterprises in China, Nebula CDN's enterprise-side prices lower than its competitors. The business customers of Nebula CDN include Xiaomi, iQiyi, Momo, Insta360, Bilibili and Xunlei itself. In August 2017, Xunlei announced they received an official license of CDN operating from Ministry of industry and information industry of China.
OneThing Cloud
OneThingCloud(Chinese: ???), a private cloud specifically designed for people who pursue the digital entertainment life with high quality, provides people with quick download, storage and removing at any time, file management, remote control, multimedia entertainment and other functions. OneThing Cloud is a multi-functional product for the internet users: it is a LinkToken mining machine, which can produce LinkToken(a virtual currency) every day if the user allow to share their network bandwidth to Nebula CDN; it is a mini NAS server, and users can upload photos or download internet resource to the storage device of OneThing Cloud, which rely on Xunlei's network acceleration service; the users can also use the device as a home multimedia terminal, which can project videos to TV through DLNA.
OneThingCloud, the best partner of mobile phones, can help users enjoy the effect that the mobile phone's memory is expanded for hundred times. Photos, documents and videos stored in the mobile phones can be quickly and synchronously accessed at anytime and anywhere. Users can buy mobile phones with the smallest memory, and enjoy the achievements of maximum memory through OneThingCloud, including taking more photos and storing more videos;
OneThingCloud can function as a PC with low energy consumption and cost. Phones and TVs can serve as screens for OneThingCloud, through which, the user can enjoy digital entertainment, business, storage and other functions and does not need to open the computer at home;
OneThingCloud, with light-NAS function, is a portable storage needing no concern about the loss. Users do not need to carry U disk or mobile hard disk, and are able to access, call and edit documents in hard disks or U disks connected with OneThingCloud through the mobile phone;
OneThing Cloud is an intelligent and environmental product, which also shoulders the function of crowd sourced computing node.
With the rapid development of big data, artificial intelligence, 4K content, AI, VR and other technologies, the explosive growth of demands for CPU, bandwidth, storage and other computing resources of the whole society has never been seen in history, while the driving force of computing cost decline - Moore's Law has almost lost its power, which generates a sharp social contradiction. The path found by Xunlei is the crowd sourced computing. That is, the user can share idle computing resources when using OneThing Cloud just through the participation in the OneThing Cloud User Reward Program. These idle resources can be transferred into shared-computing services through Xunlei's innovative technology, thus greatly reducing operating costs of internet companies, which now have been applied in the field of CDN. Since 2014, Xunlei has invested more than USD 100 million in research and development, and will continue to invest for the crowd sourced computing.
Being attracted by powerful product functions and social values, many users are stampeded into buying OneThing Cloud which has obtained 100% favorable rate on JD.com.
Xunlei Kankan
Xunlei Kankan, also known as Kankan, is a video-on-demand service with a web interface as well as a client application. Xunlei Kankan is also available on mobile platforms including Android and iOS (including iPhone and Kankan HD for iPad).
Others
In addition to the above products, the company also produces software such as a media player, a game accelerator, a live streaming video platform and online games.
Maps Xunlei
Facilities
Headquarters and offices
Xunlei Building, the new headquarters building of Xunlei, is under construction and expected to be completed in 2020. Xunlei Building is located in Shenzhen Nanshan District, adjacent to Shenzhen Metro Line 1 and Line 2. The building has 30 floors, and the total construction area of the building is about 65,000 square meters.
Concerns and criticisms
LinkToken
LinkToken is one kind of virtual currency issued by Xunlei, and this currency must be obtained through the sharing of user's network bandwidth, storage space or other resources. Xunlei said this currency can be used to pay for network acceleration services, cloud storage services and other internet content. On account of the prohibition of virtual currency trading and ICO in China, Xunlei declare that LinkToken does not constitute an ICO and it cannot be purchased or traded in cash, and the company has issued lawyer's letters to third-party trading platforms, requiring stop LinkToken trading activities. Nevertheless, the trading price of the currency still rose 30 times in a month on some unofficial trading platforms, and some critics assert that the currency is too speculative and may face some regulatory risks.
File sharing
Xunlei is different from P2P tools in that it does not support active file sharing. While copyright advocates view Xunlei as a P2P tool that facilitates copyright violation, P2P advocates criticize Xunlei as a leech with much more downloading than uploading. Also it is often observed that Xunlei prioritizes file sharing with Xunlei users rather than other client users. Many pure P2P tools have blocked Xunlei, although this trend weakened after Xunlei began balancing the number of downloads and uploads.
Xunlei sets up its own storage servers to backup the files which are not active or shared any longer. This feature is named as High-Speed Channel and allows Xunlei users retrieve data faster than others. But only paying users have access to these servers and download files.
See also
- Tencent
- FlashGet, another download manager
References
External links
- Official website
- English Version of Thunder Mini
- Baidu's Most Searched Software List
- Malware Win32/KanKan
Source of article : Wikipedia
0 Comments
