Timm Murray writes: > I'm CCing this to the Beowulf mailing list, as there are people there who > will know a lot more about this then me. > > For the benifit of the Beowulf people: On the Freenet mailing list (see > www.freenetproject.org if you're unfamiler with Freenet), we're talking > about doing a research project involving Freenet, particularly doing > simulations of the network. > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Ian Clarke" <ian at hawk.freenetproject.org> > To: <devl at freenetproject.org> > Sent: Monday, April 16, 2001 12:58 PM > Subject: Re: [freenet-devl] Looking for a research project? > > >On Mon, Apr 16, 2001 at 02:21:32PM -0700, Timm Murray wrote: > >> Anyone else around here an armchair Chaos Theorist (or even a real Chaos > >> Theorist)? If the simulations don't incorperate the size-bias they will > be > >> fately flawed. > > > >It depends what you are using the simulations for. We have primarily > >used them to test the scalability of the general system, I don't think > >the size bias would affect this, it will really effect document's > >longevity in the system, which we haven't measured yet. > > > >> Freenet is a natural system, and thus any simuations are > >> susceptable to the Butterfly Effect. > > > >Not all complex systems are chaotic. I disagree that Freenet is a > >chaotic system since it doesn't seem to be particularly reliant on the > >initial configuration of the network (a chaotic system would be).
*The above statement is correct; however, "Freenet" or a system like it may behave in ways that are chaotic, in the engineering and mathematical sense of the word "chaotic". **Investigations into whether it is or not might be interesting; but, they would be interesting to FREENET users that might wonder about network load and dynamic changes and what may be most important: predictability. *Very few nonlinear dynamic systems exhibit "chaos"; some estimates are around 2% of such systems. **Three elements are required: 1) Horseshoe effect is present (like a Cantor Set). 2) Sensitivity on initial conditions: Will a tiny change in the initial parameters in the initial phase of the creation or execution of the system result in wildly varying results. 3) Unpredictability: Given any known set of variables, when measured at any known time, can we accurately predict a later set of values when measured simultaneously (e.g. the Butterfly Effect comes to mind well for this attribute especially). > > > >> Freenet is a natural system, and thus any simuations are > >> susceptable to the Butterfly Effect. > > > >Not all complex systems are chaotic. I disagree that Freenet is a > >chaotic system since it doesn't seem to be particularly reliant on the > >initial configuration of the network (a chaotic system would be). > > I would argue that the initial configuration of the /network/ isn't chaotic, > but the path a document takes upon initial insertion and the subsequent > requests are. You were right to say that it depends on what part of Freenet > you're simulating. > > I think the best simulation you could have would be a Beowulf cluster with > each node in the cluster running multiple Freenet nodes (all on a diffrent
