[Tech] freenet not suited for sharing large data

[Gabriel K]

Compare freenet to a p2p file sharing network like DirectConnect. The main differance is that you don't have to upload the data you want to share to the network when you use DirectConnect. You just enter the network, and everyone can download you share pretty much at once. Now, DirectConnect (or kazaa or whatever) is not anonymous, true. But having to upload a share of 60GB before it becomes available to everyone is not the price a user wants to pay for anonymity. Furthermore, each node has to have HD space to store someone elses share in freenet.   What I'm saying is, that a protocol for sharing data mutually anonymously should still let a user share it's data without having to upload it first. Also, a transfer between the source and the reciever should not use too many proxies in between. One might be enough to provide anonymity. And of course, it should be encrypted so that only the reciever can decrypt it.   I think most (all?) protocols for sharing data mutually anonymously is not optimised for large data. They seem to put the same weight on messages for queries and such, as on the data itself. I say this is wrong. Users want little overhead transfers. I think the weight of control messages (queries, answers and such) should be low compared to the data itself. So it should be OK that the overhead of finding the data is large (if it's 500% more than shortest/least hops/bandwidth it's ok), if that optimises the data transfer! Think big! :) The amount of data transfered is so much bigger than the amount of control messages! Optimise data transfers!   /Gabriel