On Thu, Jan 23, 2003 at 04:30:58PM +0000, Gordan Bobic wrote:
> On Thu, 23 Jan 2003, Matthew Toseland wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, Jan 22, 2003 at 11:40:43PM +0000, Gordan Bobic wrote:
> > > Hi, I've got a few questions about the current fred implementation.
> > > 
> > > I've heard the issue raised recently about a FAQ stating that the 
> > > communication between the Freenet nodes is not encrypted. Is this true? Other 
> > > documentation implies that all communication between individual nodes occurs 
> > > over encrypted connections. I suspect the FAQ in question is wrong, but I'm 
> > > curious to find out for sure.
> > 
> > Not true. _Everything_ is encrypted in freenet, at least once.
> > Connections are encrypted using the node public/private keypairs.
> 
> Aren't connections between the nodes connected on a per-connection basis 
> with one-off keys (like https, for example)? Or was this deemed 
> unnecessary, and the payload is just sent to the relevant port, so only 
> the intended recipient node can actually decode and read it?

We use DSA. Asymmetric crypto is really slow, so we just use it to
negotiate a (random) session key.
> 
> > > The next question is regarding the network setup used for Freenet. Can the 
> > > current node implementation deal with living on multiple IP addresses at the 
> > > same time? If Fred is running on a multi-homed system, load balanced over 
> > > multiple networks, with the relevant ports forwarded from the central hub to 
> > > the actual node (single interface on fred host, with multiple interfaces 
> > > port-forwarded to it from the hub), will this work as expected? Or is it 
> > 
> > Well... it won't autodetect. But if you set up round-robin DNS for the
> > IP addresses, and then force ipAddress to that address, _that_ is known
> > to work.
> 
> How will the network deal with the situation where nodes exchange routing 
> information, and some think that a particular key is related to one IP 
> address, but the others think it is related to a different address, at the 
> same time? Will this not cause information drift where eventually all 
> nodes will converge to one IP address? Or do the nodes understand the 
> concept of multiple IP addresses? Or is the node location always assessed 
> by name, rather than IP address, when the name is supplied?
Errr. A key is associated in each node's routing table with a node
reference. A node reference has one IP address, but that can be either a
plain IP address or a name. For more information about nodes exchanging
routing information, see the papers on the website.
> 
> > > Thirdly, what are the implications of running multiple nodes on the same IP 
> > > address(es), on different ports? Will this work as expected? Will it work at 
> > > all? Will it break all of the nodes sharing the address(es)?
> > 
> > Yeah, it works. It is used extensively by developers for testing
> > purposes.
> 
> OK, thank you. :-)
> 
> Will these nodes end up talking to each other? Or will they 
> ignore each other when they notice they are on the same IP address?
They may or may not. They do not care what IP address they are on; it is
the node identity that uniquely identifies a node, since the IP address
and the port can change.
> 
> > A node identity is a public key... the node itself has a private key.
> > Normally passed along with this is a list of "physical addresses",
> > including something like tcp/arthas.dyndns.org:9013.
> 
> So, the addresses are always passed by name, when the name is supplied?
Yeah. If the ipAddress is set, then the node uses that, whether it is an
IP address or a name. If it is not set, it tries to autodetect the
internet IP address. If it can't autodetect because of being behind a
NAT firewall, it grumbles and downgrades to a transient node, unless you
have set the ipAddress already - setting a static or DNS name is the
only way to run a permanent node behind a NAT firewall (and you still
need a port forward).
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> Gordan

-- 
Matthew Toseland
[EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED]
Full time freenet hacker.
http://freenetproject.org/
Freenet Distribution Node (temporary) at http://amphibian.dyndns.org:8889/I3mGXPd6zTA/
ICTHUS.

Attachment: msg01050/pgp00000.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Reply via email to