[Freedombox-discuss] Fwd: [p2p-hackers] OneSwarm status?

[Marc Manthey]

David made some interesting suggestions , which is IMHO worth sharing  
on this list

greetings


Marc

Begin forwarded message:

> From: David Barrett <dbarrett at quinthar.com>
>
>
> With things like libtorrent and UDT I don't know that I agree it's
> impossible (or impractical) for a single person go build a really
> compelling P2P system.  I'd suggest:
>
> 1) Build a Firefox/Chrome extension that inserts a "Download" button
> into IMDB.  Definitely a 1 person job, probably a few days to a week
> of work.
>
> 2) Build a "headless" (no-UI) torrent client that is initiated by (1)
> -- perhaps using a fake MIME handler.  To start, search the top
> tracker sites for keywords and pick whichever has the largest number
> of seeds (for example), download the torrent file using curl, then
> download the torrent itself using libTorrent.  Probably 2-3 weeks of
> work for an individual.
>
> 3) Release by creating a torrent containing a binary installation that
> seeds a copy of itself on the major torrent networks.  As your
> installed base grows, the seeder count will go up, ensuring you
> eventually dominate the top of all trackers. This solves the
> "bootstrap problem" of delivering software without a centralized
> bottleneck.  I'm not entirely sure how you'd pull it off, but I bet
> its doable and pretty awesome.
>
> 4) Build an auto-upgrade facility that occasionally searches for a new
> version of itself, downloads it, verifies some huge signature,
> upgrades, and seeds the upgrade.  This solves the upgrade problem.
> Maybe also post a copy of the source and binary up on GitHub *and*
> SourceForge, ensuring (for a time) that people can directly download
> it from the web.  Or maybe just get a real web host paid by bitcoin:
> https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Web_Hosting
>
> Just get that much working without worrying about anything else.  You
> only need to write the "glue" code -- everything else is there, ready
> to be glued together.  Once you get that all done and delivered, then
> start to add the anonymization layers:
>
> 5) Figure out how to insert arbitrary packets into libtorrent's
> existing peer connections.  Basically, advertise via libtorrent to
> peers that you are are a special anonymizing peer, which means you are
> willing to response to an enhnaced Torrent protocol that includes
> anonymizing functions.
>
> 6) One of those functions might be a "tit for tat" routing service.
> Basically: "I'll send one of your packets to whoever you want, if you
> send one of my packets to whoever I want."  This could be used on top
> of the standard torrent protocol: you and I could each help anonymize
> the other download from a totally standard torrent.
>
> 7) And of course as you gain distribution then you can just develop
> your own p2p protocol entirely.  But that's not really needed for a
> very long time.
>
> It's not trivial.  But it's not impossible.  And whoever does it will
> be a legend!
>
> -david
>
>
>
>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Michael Piatek <piatek at gmail.com>
>> To: theory and practice of decentralized computer networks
>> <p2p-hackers at lists.zooko.com>
>> Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2011 19:34:56 -0800
>> Subject: Re: [p2p-hackers] OneSwarm status?
>> Hi David,
>>
>> OneSwarm is open source, and we encourage contributions :-).
>>
>> As a practical matter, writing production-quality P2P software is
>> really too much work for one individual, particularly if usability is
>> a concern. At the very least, I'm not aware of any widely used P2P
>> system that was wholly created and maintained by a single person.
>>
>> Why aren't larger groups working in this area? In my view, it's
>> because there's no business model. It's easier to build a robust  
>> cloud
>> service than a robust P2P system, and the bandwidth costs of
>> commercial CDNs are continuing to plummet. You'd be nuts to build,
>> say, a new content sharing service atop a P2P design. That leaves
>> anonymity and/or censorship resistance as driving applications, but
>> it's very difficult to scale up funding in that area. Research grants
>> only last a few years and fund a few students at most, and even very
>> successful projects like Tor have difficulty supporting more than a
>> few developers and are chronically under-provisioned.
>>
>> I sincerely hope this situation will change, but I haven't yet seen
>> much of a push towards a sustainable model for P2P development.  
>> Ideas?
>>
>> -Michael
>>
>> On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 6:52 PM, David Barrett  
>> <dbarrett at quinthar.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Anonymization is one part of that.  But it's only one part of it.  I
>>> think there's just so much awesome stuff waiting to be built -- so
>>> many data sources and open source libraries ready to be tied  
>>> together
>>> -- I'm wondering what the holdup is?  Anybody on this list could  
>>> build
>>> the above future.  Literally, it only takes one highly motivated
>>> person to raise the bar and change the world forever.
>>
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