Re: [GNUnet-developers] file sharing

[Christian Grothoff]

On 2/6/19 11:38 AM, Catonano wrote:
> I managed to share a file with a friend of mine through Gnunet
> 
> In both directions: he downloaded a file I had shared (as some of you
> have done too) AND I have downloaded a file that he had shared
> 
> So now I have a few questions about the Gnunet file sharing system
> 
> How does it work ?
> 
> Do I need to "seed" it as I would do with bittorrent in order to keep it
> available ?

Not strictly speaking. Peers may cache the file and keep it available
even if you are offline. But there is no guarantee that they will keep
it available, and a yet to be fixed design flaw (IMO) is that they may
keep some parts available but not the entire file, resulting in the
possibility of failed downloads.

> Or, can I go off line and it will still be fetchable by people ?

Yes, for a while.

> Currently i am hosting my personal blog on DAT but I'm not happy with it
> for some reasons
> 
> I'm thinking about hosting it on Gnunet.
> 
> Is that advisable ?
> Is there any specific notion I should keep in mind in doing so ?

For a blog, I would probably use the VPN/Exit hosting, not file-sharing.
For that, you need to run the 'exit' service and configure a TCP exit to
your Webserver (running on loopback) and then use a GNS name with a VPN
record. With that, anyone who has your GNS name and configured the VPN
can access your blog via their browser, similar to an eepsite (i2p) or a
Tor hidden service.  Note that due to stylography, blogs are virtually
never anonymous.

> I am tempted by the idea off hosting web content without paying any
> hoster and without paying for a domain name

Not paying for a domain name == GNU Name System (GNS) is what you want.
And self-hosting again is best done with the VPN.

> Hosting my stufff with resources I already have, my laptop and a quite
> decent adsl connection

Note that the GNUnet-VPN case, your site will only be available when you
are online, that's the one thing that is likely to be not quite what you
want here.  In the future, I want to see a better integration of FS with
GNS, so you can point GNS domain names to FS URIs. If we combine that
with a gnunet-gns-proxy that understands this, it would solve your
problem perfectly (available while offline & GNS). But sadly, we are not
there today.

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