Re: [GNUnet-developers] slocate

[Niklas Höglund]

jan marco alkema wrote:

> Hello Niklas, Christian,
>
> Thank you for your feedback ---)
>
> Niklas, I can see in your feedback that you have experience with file
> sharing systems --)
>
>  
>
> > This should probably be built as a separate application on top of gnunet,
> >    
> ftp, gnutella, ...
>
> In my opinion the applications gnunet, ftp, gnutella should use the same
> MySQL database structure. I prefer that the projects make and maintain the
> database interface to this structure. The database structure should be some
> kind of rfc???? document.
Different programs need different database structures, because they use 
their data in different ways. In gnunet, all data is stored as encrypted 
1k blocks, while in gnutella entire files are stored unencrypted.

I guess that what you want is a unified way to search all this data. As 
someone wrote here earlier, there are projects to provide a single user 
interface on top of many peer-to-peer systems. I think "gift" is the 
name of one.

> > The problem with protocols like FTP is that when things get overloaded it 
> > doesn't work any longer, while in gnunet the file would be propagated to
> > other nodes automatically. This could make gnunet faster than FTP.
> >    
> If a gnunet node gets overloaded you maybe also have a problem. If this
> node is a single source all packets must be put on Internet. If 1 block
> is missing you haven’t the complete file.
No, but if another node has all but one block, the overloaded node needs 
only to transfer that one block for a transfer of a file to be 
completed. Another faster node can provide all other blocks.

I have downloaded files of a couple of megabytes in decent speeds from 
gnunet. That was probably files that were available from some fast node 
(or had migrated there).

> > Just look at what happens in gnutella when many people try to download apopular 
> > file from a single source.
> >    
> This problem is the “same” as with the distribution of new releases. They
> copy the distribution to multiple (“mirrors”) computers.
>
> In your example. You want to download a file from "A". The singe source "A"
> should copy it to other computers ("B", "C", "D", etc). You must be rerouted
> to computer "C" for the real ftp download.
Yes, but this happens automatically in gnunet. For every file, without 
human intervention.


> > [...snip...]   But, again, this is a bit further down the road, don't expect 
> > this to happen this year :-).

> In “The Linux world” projects work together (against Microsoft for example).
> If all the different project work together this could be realized a lot
> faster then probably next year ---)
>  
But in the world of programming, things usually take a factor pi more 
time than expected...