Replying to original author and -tech, which is more appropriate than -support
for this mail.
On Saturday 15 September 2007 20:40, you wrote:
> Hello, I'm a spanish student that want to write a new p2p software based on
> Freenet protocol, but applying another point of view.
Cool. (It shows, your english is quite difficult in parts, still, I don't know
any Spanish... :) ).
>
> In this one case the program would not serve to create a network of
> appearance similar to the World Wide Web being used pages written in HTML,
> but that more similar to would be known programs p2p than simply they
> interchange archives (although with some differences also).
You want to build a Freenet client which is closer to p2p than to www. Okay.
(Check out Thaw, Frost first btw).
>
> The differences would be:
> ? the anonymity
> ? the impossibility of the censorship
> ? "a new" system of searches
> ? others
>
> The program would be focused coverall to the text document transmission,
> generating more than a "signature hash" by file, could be made a signature
> hash by each paragraph or each page (but applying it only to the text, not
> to the format) so that whole archives like part of the chain could be used
> search. It would serve this to find documents with relations to each other
> (with common content).
Aha, so it *is* about web pages ?? I thought you said it would be closer to
traditional p2p than to web pages as currently implemented on Freenet ?
>
> In addition I have thought that it would be possible to create a "robot"
> like an object (the implementation of a class) traveling that was dedicated
> to look for information to create data bases search. The object in himself
> would contain all its information ciphered with asymmetric key, and it would
> only maintain direction IP of the ip adress of the robot "house" (in this
> one case is only possible to know that a particular ip address is part of
> that network, but nothing else), with which it would be sending data
> periodically, and traveling through the nodes (that would have a mechanism
> to manage the robots).
So you send out some sort of request ("robot"), which is passed from node to
node, until it reaches some depth, creating an index of some sort?
> As soon as the robot detected that direction IP of
> the "master computer" does not respond, "would die".
Definitely not a good idea. Makes the robot traceable, and makes the network
harvestable. Both are bad. Darknet nodes must only connect with their darknet
peers; opennet nodes can connect more broadly but still we don't want to make
it easy for an attacker.
Explanation of "harvesting" : http://wiki.freenetproject.org/NodeHarvesting
> Whenever the program
> p2p began would send a robot to update its data base (if therefore it wished
> the user it, he would be optional). The data base would only contain
> identifiers of archives associated with its names, in no case its situation
> within the network.
Sounds extremely heavy. Anything you build must be scalable, if you want it to
be widely used. Freenet certainly must be scalable.
At the moment, text searching on Freenet is accomplished by a single node
running a "spider" program/plugin (XMLSpider), which does the same thing that
Google does - it fetches pages, looks for more pages from links in those its
already fetched, and fetches them too, and records which keywords were in
which pages ... Unlike Google, our spider publishes its keyword indexes onto
Freenet, so that another plugin, the XMLLibrarian, can search them for a
user, downloading only the indexes which are needed.
> (A mechanism of digital signature would be used to
> verify that the internal code of the object robot is not malignant).
*!*!*"*!!*?$*%"&!*$%&
Seriously, mobile code on a supposedly secure network? There'd have to be a
*REALLY* good reason to even consider this. Creating a secure execution
environment that doesn't give away stuff you don't want to give away ("hmmm,
this node seems to insert this freesite, and also this frost identity..."),
is a major challenge in itself.
>
> On the other hand, I believe that it is necessary that the network is able
> to absorb information of other networks (always noticing the user that they
> come from nonsafe channels). These networks would be the World Wide Web, the
> network Ed2k (Edonkey) or the network Kademlia (eMule), for example.
This is an interesting idea which has occasionally been proposed. The problem
is that any time you go to an external, insecure network, you:
a) Reveal the fact that you are running a node AND
b) Potentially request content that may get you into trouble
>
> The data acquisition would consist of using api of finders like google,
> yahoo either others to collect data of the World Wide Web and the motors
> search or implemented of the networks ed2k and kad. This one single type of
> searches would become at local level, not through freenet, but I believe
> that equipment would be enough. It would serve mainly to contribute content
> of fast form to network freenet. (I do not talk about material which it
> harms the author rights, although is a collateral effect that surely would
> appear).
Okay, if the searches are simply part of your client, that's different - if
you want to make a client which uses Freenet, edonkey, and the web, that's
fine by me, let me know if you need any help e.g. the ability to get a hash
of content before fetching it fully.
>
> The main problem is that I believe that is a loss of time to design and to
> create a new protocol for this one type of network when already some
> similars exist, and is by this reason why I would like to learn a little on
> the operation and implementation of this one. I need to document itself on
> your system and unfortunately my ISP blocks the access to your page?
Your ISP sucks. :(
Use Tor, or I2P, or a proxy, to get to our site.
>
> Of some form, although outside competing (I am sure that you surpass to me
> widely in knowledge on this one subject, is difficult that I can compete), I
> believe that we could collaborate to improve the freenet.
>
> By the way, it forgot, my project to it will be written in C# because I
> believe that it is more portable than Java (verified in my they debian of 64
> bits).
Not true. Sun Java admittedly will only run on a few platforms, but Kaffe and
GCJ between them will run on just about anything. And since Sun released the
source code this will only get better. And yes, right now Freenet only runs
on Sun Java, but that's because of lack of demand rather than any serious
unresolvable technical issue afaics.
I personally develop Freenet on an AMD64 system using debian etch.
> In addition, the platform. Net is faster than the JVM, and although
> the project Monkey is something slower at the moment, I do not doubt that
> someday next it will surpass in yield to the JVM.
Not true either. Java is fast. Arguably it's faster than C in many areas. Not
that it doesn't have other problems. Mono/C# are very similar technologies to
Java.
>
> Thank you for your atention.
>
> Andreu Correa Casablanca.
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