On Fri, 08 Jun 2007 00:05:41 +0100, Matthew Toseland wrote: > On Thursday 07 June 2007 21:23, Jusa Saari wrote: >> On Wed, 06 Jun 2007 19:11:27 +0100, Matthew Toseland wrote: >> > Recent probe data suggests a theory: >> > >> > Parts of the network are "rabbit holes" or "dungeons", i.e. >> > sub-networks which are only weakly connected to the larger network. >> > These cover a small chunk of the keyspace, say 0.36-0.41 (roughly, in >> > the trace I had). A request for 0.5 got stuck down the rabbit hole. >> > The gateway node at 0.436 was backed off; if the request had been able >> > to reach that node, it would have been able to get much closer to >> > where it should be. So the request bounced around in the dungeon, and >> > eventually DNFed. >> > >> > What we need is some backtracking. At the moment backtracking only >> > occurs when we actually run out of nodes in a pocket i.e. when it is >> > really small. We track the best location seen so far on the request >> > (not including dead ends i.e. RNFs), and whenever this improves we >> > reset the HTL back to the maximum (10); otherwise it is decremented. >> >> No, what you need is an opennet. Having a "sparse" network with plenty >> of "leaves" only connected to the rest of a network through a single >> node is a natural feature of a darknet. The leaves are made of people >> who happened to be in #freenet-refs at the same time, exchanged refs, >> and left; the connecting nodes are those who are running automated ref >> exchange scripts and therefore get connected to the new leaves as they >> are formed. Simply backing away from the leaves is going to overload the >> single connecting node since all the traffic to and from the leaves is >> going to go through it; and of course if that node happens to go offline >> for any reason the network will splinter. >> >> A darknet is never going to work well; the network topology forces the >> majority of request through a small amount of well-connected nodes. They >> are going to get overloaded, and even if they won't, the network will be >> splintered if they are taken offline, which is easy since they have to >> be semi-public to get well connected in the first place. This makes the >> "dark" Freenet easy to take down. > > We are not talking about darknet vs opennet. If you want an opennet go use > Tor hidden services, or I2P, or any of the numerous opennet p2p's out > there. In the long term, if there is no darknet, THERE IS NO FREENET. It > doesn't matter if we have an opennet that outperforms BitTorrent over Tor > (which incidentally isn't that hard!): It will be blocked using the > systems that are already in place in most western countries, let alone > China et al.
Wihtout opennet, there won't be Freenet either. The darknet is too much trouble to get into and stay in. And a repressive regime can always simply look at machines which are exchanging encrypted traffick with nonstandard ports (non-https) in other machines. > Now, I might concede that many of the problems of the present network are > caused by the pseudo-opennet growth of the present "darknet". But we have > excellent reasons to believe that if it were in fact a true darknet, it > would be a small world network and therefore navigable. No. The pseudo-opennet growth is what enables there to be a network at all. Freenet lacks sufficient user base that anyone wanting to use it would be likely to find any real-life friends already using it; and even if there were sufficient numbers, going through your friends asking "do you run Freenet" would simply be too much hassle, _especially_ since it might risk them thinking that you're wanting to look at naughty stuff. Besides, there can never be a true darknet, for the simple reason that in order to connect to _anyone_ will require telling them you're running a node. The only question is the exact shade of gray a particular network will be; currently, Freenet users are stumbling in the dark :(. > That's not to say that we shouldn't implement opennet. Opennet is a great > way to get people onto the network. But it is not a long term solution. It is the only solution that has a snowballs chance in Hell of actually working. > And it will very likely suffer from all sorts of serious problems, just as > 0.5 did. Backtracking will help on a true darknet, because it is likely to > be an imperfect network, with sub-networks constantly joining up. It will > help on a hybrid network, because not all of the darknet sub-networks will > be strongly connected to the opennet. And it will probably help even on a > pure opennet, because real world stresses mean that the topology on a pure > opennet will not be perfect. > > It is much easier to debug many of these routing and load management > problems on a darknet, even a pseudo-opennet darknet, because we have much > slower connection churn than on an opennet. Once opennet is implemented, > while some problems will be reduced, many other problems will spring up in > their place. Problems which we never managed to adequately solve on the > 0.5 opennet. For example, you can get onto (and up to speed on) the 0.7 > pseudo-darknet a good deal faster than onto the 0.5 opennet. But we will Assuming you know some people who run Freenet and make this fact semi-public. Otherwise it's lurking in #freenet-refs for you. > implement opennet - after we have at least tried to sort out some of the > current problems, and demonstrated experimentally and observationally that > the best way forward is opennet, that we've fixed all the easy stuff. > > At least, that's the plan as I understand it. >> >> So, the darknet is fragile, won't ever perform well, and is a pain in >> the ass to get into and stay in. No amount of tweaking can get over >> these fundamental inherent flaws in a darknet approach. Only an >> enabled-by-default opennet can solve them. > > Opennet will never be enabled by default. We will ask the user whether > they want opennet._______________________________________________ Devl > mailing list Then I guess Freenet will never grow large enough to accomplish much of anything. > Devl at freenetproject.org > http://emu.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl
