On Wed, Sep 21, 2005 at 12:13:16PM +0200, Alex R. Mosteo wrote: > [Ian] > >>>>Well, if that would truly be the topology then the alternative is > >>>>"clusters of isolated dark nodes", which is worse? > >>>> > >>> > [Matthew] > >>>There would be no real reason to grow the darknet, that's the > >>>point. If > >>>the only way to connect (easily) is by growing the darknet, it will > >>>grow. > > Or not. Maybe it will simply stagnate. The most probably scenery in my > eyes is that people will want to join the darknet. To achieve this, they > will connect to untrusted people. In practice, the darknet will be the > opennet. There will be online repositories of "trusted" nodes to connect to.
If the darknet isn't viable then what is the point of Freenet? The opennet can be blocked very easily given firewalling (BT has implemented blocking of illegal child porn sites in the UK; it's only a matter of time before illegal copyright infringing sites are also blocked, and if freenet is found to be illegal, it can be blocked too). Even without firewalling, it won't be hard to launch all manner of attacks on the opennet which are much harder on the darknet. Online repositories of "trusted" nodes? What do you mean by "trusted"? And they won't produce the correct topology, so routing won't work in that subset of the network... and even if they do, there is no protection, because the attacker knows about all the nodes. Admittedly it is SLIGHTLY more expensive than with opennet. > > I see no easy way to find trusted links until the network is ubiquitous. > And even then, how many trusted links are expected per node? In a > critical environment, I would not have more than one or two people of my > confidence. More probably there would be no one who couldn't turn a mole > in harsh times. In which case, Freenet is completely pointless. Because it is of no use in the places where it would be most useful. It is only useful in temporarily liberal western regimes. In which case I am highly dubious that the material on the Church of Scientology, the Diebold files, and so on, outweigh the child porn. > > [Ian] > >>So you propose to force people to run darknet nodes even though they > >>might be quite satisfied to use the opennet? I don't believe in > >>forcing users to do things against their will. > > Rightly so IMO, because they don't follow. I am not proposing to force anyone to do anything. > > [Matthew] > > Eh? I don't understand. If they want to use the opennet, they can use > > the opennet. > > Users want to access *all* the available content in the most safe > manner. For some, it will be just through trusted neighbors. For others, > it will be untrusted ones. If the darknet is initially smaller than the opennet, then they will likely stick with the opennet. Some people may hack their nodes to connect to both, but there will not be ubiquitous gateways between them. > > [Matthew] > >>>>>The result of which is that it does not tell > >>>>>us anything about the viability of the global darknet. And WHEN, > >>>>>not if, > >>>>>the opennet is compromized, there is no global darknet. Just a few > >>>>>disconnected nodes. > > And at that point, forced by circumstances, people in the disconnected > nodes will do the *real* effort to find trusted neighbors. At that point it will be far more dangerous than doing it before that. > > [Ian] > >>People get a choice. If people chose to leave their nodes open, then > >>so be it. It isn't our place to force people to do one thing or the > >>other. > > [Matthew] > > In which case the whole experiment will have been totally pointless, and > > there will be NOTHING to build on in the future, because we won't have > > actually prototyped the globally scalable darknet. > > A legitimate concern. But. > > If there are two networks, except for those under critical risk to their > lives, people will chose the easy one, I.e. the opennet. > the one where all other people > (and content) is. *Some* people will try to build a darknet. Because it is better. It is vastly more secure. And it is a practical, sustainable solution for those behind the Wall. > In practice you will have a big opennet unsuitable for > your test purposes and some small darknets, maybe unknown to you, and > probably so small to be of no value to your intention of testing the > global scalable darknet. Aren't WASTE networks already useful for these > people? They don't scale but they serve for reduced groups with very > specific interests. Why do you think it would not scale? It CAN scale. It is possible for it to route on a very large network. And my friends and my friend's friends are two different sets of people. Especially in the initial situation in the West, where there is no persecution and therefore no need to require them to be Ultimately Trustworthy. Just because WASTE doesn't scale does NOT mean Freenet can't scale. > > Maybe I've missed something in the discussion, so, will be there some > forced incompatibility in the nodes to prevent adding trusted and > untrusted links? Don't tempt me. :) > > The only outcome I can foresee is that one of the two networks will > prevail. Why? Either because the darknet routing works and the opennet > don't, either because it works in the opennet and all the content is > there. Once that happens, the network will be no longer a pure darknet > in any case. And then they destroy the opennet. And we're stuffed. > > So, if I've understood you right (and please correct me if not), your > main concern is to have a big darknet with the right topology. Yes. > > What do you think about this: use some sophisticated management of > links. You have two categories: trusted and untrusted. You may transfer > your links between these, and activate these independently. > > The network can get a quick start with people using untrusted links. > When the network has a reasonable size, it may be easy for people to > find trusted friends. At that point, you make their links trusted and > deactivate the untrusted ones. Or you reduce the number of them until > you need these no more. So the network will progressively mutate into > darknet form. Feasible? How do you find these links? Central introduction servers? Path folding? Either way the information is still out there, and the nodes can still be harvested. It may be necessary to have some limited, local link mobility; this has been discussed before but as usual everyone was asleep. But it must not be possible for links to migrate right across the network, because that will allow harvesting. -- Matthew J Toseland - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freenet Project Official Codemonkey - http://freenetproject.org/ ICTHUS - Nothing is impossible. Our Boss says so.
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