[Gzz-commits] manuscripts/pointers article.rst

[Benja Fallenstein]

CVSROOT:        /cvsroot/gzz
Module name:    manuscripts
Branch:         
Changes by:     Benja Fallenstein <address@hidden>      03/11/03 19:57:30

Modified files:
        pointers       : article.rst 

Log message:
        editing; address XXX

CVSWeb URLs:
http://savannah.gnu.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs/gzz/manuscripts/pointers/article.rst.diff?tr1=1.110&tr2=1.111&r1=text&r2=text

Patches:
Index: manuscripts/pointers/article.rst
diff -u manuscripts/pointers/article.rst:1.110 
manuscripts/pointers/article.rst:1.111
--- manuscripts/pointers/article.rst:1.110      Mon Nov  3 19:38:13 2003
+++ manuscripts/pointers/article.rst    Mon Nov  3 19:57:30 2003
@@ -278,9 +278,6 @@
 searching for versions of this document. It could also use it
 to notify the user when new versions of the file become available.
 
-.. XXX move previous paragraph to Applications? but it'd be nice
-   to show here how this relates to existing systems. HMMM.
-
 Because they require no centralized version management,
 pointer records may be able to unify the namespaces
 of different P2P systems in a similar way to hash-based identifiers.
@@ -310,7 +307,10 @@
 
 .. [#] For STORage Module. Storm is the name of our
    Free Software implementation, discussed in
-   Section XXX.
+   Section 5.
+
+.. XXX NOTE: if we move any sections around, update
+   the above section number!
 
 The Storm model is comprised of the following components:
 
@@ -357,21 +357,30 @@
 is used to publish mappings from pointer ids
 to the block ids of pointer records.
 
-The benefits of starting from this basic model are numerous:
-
-- simple to implement - existing models cover this well
-
-- can be made to work with peers that join and leave small
-  ad hoc networks often (and the global "net" less often)
-
-- robust - all state of the system is in the blocks
+The Storm model is *simple to implement* on top existing
+P2P overlays. It allows *simple synchronization* e.g.
+between mirrors, consisting of only copying all blocks
+available on only one of the hosts to the other host.
+It is also *robust*, because all the information is stored
+in blocks, which are immutable; no data is ever overwritten,
+protecting from accidents. 
+
+Finally, if desktop machines
+use the same data model to store local data, the desktop
+and Web namespaces can be unified; a document can keep
+its address when published on the network, or when
+downloaded to the local harddisk (see [fallenstein03storm]_).
+
+.. - can be made to work with peers that join and leave small
+     ad hoc networks often (and the global "net" less often)
+   -> XXX what does this mean?
 
 
 Applications
 ============
 
 In this section, we discuss three possible applications
-of pointer blocks: A P2P Web, a distributed Wayback Machine,
+of pointer records: A P2P Web, a distributed Wayback Machine,
 and software updates akin to Debian ``apt`` and Windows Update.
 
 **A File-shared, Decentralized, Heterogeneous Web.**
@@ -425,7 +434,7 @@
 as the rest of the file-shared web, simply configured slightly
 differently.
 
-**Software / media updates.**
+**Software updates.**
 As an example of a different application,
 pointer records could be used to implement
 a p2p version of software upgrades
@@ -434,17 +443,17 @@
 updates could be downloaded from the closest
 host that has a copy.
 
-An important advantage of pointer records, due
-to the simple underlying block abstraction, is
+An important advantage of pointer records is
 that it is possible to
 burn the new versions of packages
 (and their pointers records) to a CD
 to take to a machine that is not connected
-to a network. Because the versioning model only
-uses the pointer blocks as data, the software upgrade
-should simply work out in such a case.
-This advantage is not shared by for example the 
-onion networks model XXX.
+to a network. Because the versioning model
+needs only the pointer blocks, not a connection
+to the network, the software update could be
+performed exactly the same way as with an Internet connection.
+Other P2P versioning schemes, such as the Content-Addressable
+Network proposal, do not share this advantage.
 
 
 Implementation
@@ -530,7 +539,9 @@
 ================
 
 We would like to thank |Hermanni| 
-[XXX who else] for comments and discussions.
+for comments and discussions.
+
+.. XXX who else
 
 .. |Hermanni| raw:: latex