On Fri, Apr 04, 2003 at 07:43:20PM +1000, fish wrote: > So I was sitting here hacking on adapt2, and so I added a freenet backend to > it. (adapt2 is my apt proxy/apt cacher like tool, that doens't suck like > they do. it does, howevr, suck in other ways right now, specifically there > is a few fatal bugs left in it :-p) > > I promptly realised that this was entirely useless, since apt is a shitty of > http client, and times out way before any data is transerred. (my swiss > cheese (so called because it's full of tunnels) connection probably doens't > help there (the node is on a 33.6 modem on the other end of a vpn link over > a 4.5km and a 1.5km 802.11 link :-p), but hey, it's better than what I had a > week ago :-p)
Heh, a 4.5km 802.11 link isn't even legal where I live :) > > So I thought I'd look for some ideas on how to make it not useless in the > future. > > I had this idea that it could insert all of the files that it downloads off the > main internet into freenet, and share it's list of them for other clients, > fmb style with trust metrics and stuff. But then it occoured to me that this > is still entirely useless, because freenet is most likely going to usually > be slower than a non-anonymous implentation of the same thing, and you're > already giving up your anonymity by grabbing packages off the web/ftp site. > > Do any of you you have have any ideas on how to make this useful? Am I on > crack any more than usual here? I don't know. I worked on apt-get over fproxy in the past, it was a bit ridiculous, but it'd be better with a proper downloader that could use splitfiles and many download threads... freenet could probably get a decent speed up in this situation, although there are lots of mirrors for debian. A Packages file could be generated with the addition of an X-CHK: header for each file, as well as the current md5sum; this could be run by a trusted individual either at debian and published there, or published as an SSK DBR. With some performance biases, as are likely to be implemented in the mid-term future, freenet could be extremely fast for this stuff, although most places there are already very fast mirrors. I suppose you might not want Mallory to know exactly what packages you have installed just by monitoring your internet connection though, so there is a "privacy" argument, there is a "cover traffic" argument, and there are of course possibilities for quasi-legal repositories maintained anonymously for nonredistributible packages :) Of course I don't know anything about that. :) > > The official word of the people I live with is that apt-over-freenet is a > completly useless thing to be doing, but I'd like to think that they're > wrong :-p > > - fish -- Matthew Toseland [EMAIL PROTECTED]/[EMAIL PROTECTED] Full time freenet hacker. http://freenetproject.org/ Freenet Distribution Node (temporary) at http://80-192-4-36.cable.ubr09.na.blueyonder.co.uk:8889/yXV5QIkgv0c/ ICTHUS.
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