Author: toad Date: 2005-12-05 16:09:37 +0000 (Mon, 05 Dec 2005) New Revision: 7667
Modified: trunk/website/pages/news.php Log: updated front page. maybe too long. Modified: trunk/website/pages/news.php =================================================================== --- trunk/website/pages/news.php 2005-12-04 10:22:06 UTC (rev 7666) +++ trunk/website/pages/news.php 2005-12-05 16:09:37 UTC (rev 7667) @@ -12,9 +12,43 @@ our <a href="/index.php?page=donate">donations page</a>. <h3>News</h3> -<b>9th September, 2005: Major new version of Freenet expected by Christmas</b><br> -Freenet is currently undergoing a major re-write incorporating a number of fundamental changes. Version 0.7 of Freenet aims to create a scalable darknet, where users only connect directly to other users they know and trust. The purpose of this change is to protect users who may be placed at risk simply by using the software, irrespective of what they are using it for. In the new model, only people you choose to connect to will know that you are running the software. Previous darknets, such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASTE";>WASTE</a>, have been limited to relatively small disconnected networks. The core innovation in Freenet 0.7 will be to allow a globally scalable darknet, capable of supporting millions of users. This is made possible by the fact that human relationships tend to form <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-world_network";>small-world networks</a>, a property that can be exploited to find short paths between any two people. The work is based on based a talk given at <a href="http://defcon.org/";>DEFCON 13</a> by Ian Clarke and Oskar Sandberg (<a href="http://freenetproject.org/papers/vegas1_dc.pdf";>slides available here</a>). -<p> -Other modifications include switching from TCP to UDP, which allows <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UDP_hole_punching";>UDP hole punching</a> along with faster transmission of messages between peers in the network. While previously Freenet only supported the insertion and retrieval of information, Freenet 0.7 will support new modes of usage including the real-time broadcast of messages. Applications of this range from real-time anonymous chat (perhaps through the IRC protocol) to RSS-feeds. -<p> -Using donations through this website, the project has been able to employ one developer full-time, Matthew Toseland. Matthew has since become the backbone of the Freenet development effort. The project is always in need of additional funds to assure Matthew's continued employment, so if you can contribute to our efforts, please visit our <a href="/index.php?page=donate">donations</a> page. +<b>5th December, 2005: Major new version of Freenet in progress (updated)</b><br> +Freenet is currently undergoing a major re-write incorporating a number of fundamental changes. +Version 0.7 of Freenet aims to (in addition to supporting traditional "opennet" operation, whereby +users can quickly and easily get onto the network by downloading seednodes files from a central +source), create a scalable darknet, where users only connect directly to other users they know and +(at least marginally) trust. The purpose of this change is to protect users who may be placed +at risk simply by using the software, irrespective of what they are using it for. In the new +model, only people you choose to connect to will know that you are running the software. +<br> +Previous darknets, such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASTE";>WASTE</a>, have been +limited to relatively small disconnected networks. The core innovation in Freenet 0.7 will be +to allow a globally scalable darknet, capable of supporting millions of users. This is made +possible by the fact that human relationships tend to form +<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-world_network";>small-world networks</a>, a +property that can be exploited to find short paths between any two people. The work is based on +based a talk given at <a href="http://defcon.org/";>DEFCON 13</a> by Ian Clarke and +Oskar Sandberg (<a href="http://freenetproject.org/papers/vegas1_dc.pdf";>slides available here</a>). +<br> +Other modifications include switching from TCP to UDP, which allows +<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UDP_hole_punching";>UDP hole punching</a> along with faster +transmission of messages between peers in the network. Anonymous message broadcast ("publish/subscribe"), +and other new basic functions, have been postponed to 0.8 in order to get 0.7 out as soon as possible; +Freenet 0.7 will support insertion and retrieval of information, as 0.5 does, but it should do it faster, +and more securely. It will not include "premix routing" (a difficult technique to provide an extremely +high level of anonymity to requesters and posters which we will introduce in 0.8 or 0.9), but we will +endeavour to ensure that 0.7 is more secure than 0.5 in every respect. Thanks to the new transport layer, +and darknet support, we expect that Freenet 0.7 will be usable in countries with national firewalls +(China blocked the current version some time ago - both the web site and the protocol). +<br> +Currently, we have insert and retrieval of arbitrarily large files ("redundant splitfiles") working, +and a text mode interface. We should have an alpha which has initial FCP and Fproxy support by the end of +January. Darknet routing is working, but not yet opennet, and there are issues to address with load +balancing, but our new model (based on Ethernet and TCP/IP) is currently being debugged and should work as +it is based on tried and tested solutions. If you want to help, join #freenet-alphatest on irc.freenode.net, +or contact <a href="toad at amphibian.dyndns.org">Toad (Matthew Toseland)</a>. +<br> +Using donations through this website, the project has been able to employ one developer full-time, +Matthew Toseland. Matthew has since become the backbone of the Freenet development effort. The +project is always in need of additional funds to assure Matthew's continued employment, so if you +can contribute to our efforts, please visit our <a href="/index.php?page=donate">donations</a> page.
