Gnutella's Challenge 96
Gnutella News sent in an excerpt from a clip2 DSS report about gnutella's evolution and condition. "the network has neither smoothly scaled nor catastrophically collapsed since average traffic grew to regularly exceed dial-up modem bandwidth in August 2000. Instead, the network persists in a fragmented state comprised of numerous continuously evolving responsive segments, the largest of which typically contains hundreds of hosts. We estimate at present that unique Gnutella users per day number no less than 10,000 and may range as high as 30,000. We suggest that further technical innovation and wide adoption of this innovation are necessary for the Gnutella network to scale beyond its present state."" Read this if you're interested in p2p [?] .
That's GNU/Tella (Score:1)
Limitation not inherent to P2P (Score:1)
There's nothing inherently unscalable about P2P, it's just Gnutella's broadcast searching that doesn't scale. Freenet should scale quite nicely--the network loosely sorts files by key across machines, so you can have a linear search that homes in on a machine holding the file, instead of broadcasting the search to everyone.
Re:Gimme my fix (Score:1)
Re:The problem with MojoNation (Score:1)
The whole deal about Mojo Nation is bartering for resources, not data. When you contribute to the system, you are contributing resources and services. It actually costs Mojo to publish data and make it available to others, since that is draining some resources from the system. However, the downloaders pay their own way, resource wise, when downloading, so you are not saddled with that cost (unlike other systems, where you pay in your own resources for every download from you!). A goal is a system where even the most popular content can be distributed for little cost to the publisher, but also works for storing data that isn't wildly popular.
With MN, every file automatically gets redundancy and you don't have run your own server keep data in the system. You could even just pay out more Mojo to make sure your blocks stick around. You can't do that with a Napster-like system.
So Mojo Nation isn't just a "file sharing" program, it's a distributed filesystem built on top of a market for computing resources (especially bandwidth).
Re:Idea -- SOLUTION (Score:3)
Bandwidth Limited Connections. When two gnutella clients connect they should send in the reply the allocated bandwidth for that connection. The forwarding protocol should not allow more queries to be sent than the bandwidth allows. This would require a form of russian roulette on the packets--a method of killing queries.
It is feasable that the client should be able to forward post and response packets. Query packets are the most likely target for such filters. The filters could be implemented in several manners:
Packet filtering would help to solve the current protocol limitation. Since the network is totally connected it would change the dynamics of the gnutella network and make it a more connected place even though there is a higher probability that the queries are never answered.
I say good riddance (Score:1)
Gnutella network traffic exceeds bandwidth capabilities of dial-up users? Drop them. You can't take the heat, get out. Wanna play with the big boys, pay up.
I'm running Napster, and there's nothing more annoying that downloading from a 56k source, or waiting for a 56 guy to finish. 56k people (for this very same reason in fact) also don't like sharing any files. They can't. Any additional traffic will drive their leeching speeds to the floor.
That's what they are, leeches. Because they can't share and contribute constructively to the network. Napster keeps a central database, which frees up dial-up users from handling network messages, so they're still tolerable on that service. But on Gnutella there's no place for anyone running 56k or less.
I for one won't feel sorry about this development. A good portion of users will drop off, but they're just users, no matter how much thet want they can't be servers.
Re:Not exactly (Score:2)
And more to the point, if your definition rules out one of the top three peer to peer systems, that would seem to suggest to me that you need a better definition!
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True P2P Can't Scale? Take a look at Freenet (Score:3)
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Swarm delivery is the way around bandwidth limits (Score:4)
One downside to swarm delivery systems is that data is "published", simple sharing of a common filebase (a la Napster and Gnutella) is not possible. Someone has to upload the pieces to the system in the first place for them to be available because the system does not do the "let me take a look through your hard disk for things to give to others" kind of file sharing found in other P2P systems. jim
True P2P applications have this limitation (Score:5)
The exchanges in Napster themselves may in fact be peer-to-peer, but we need to remember that they have big honking servers arbitrating the connections.
Gnutella's design is terrific (and a great hack), but unless they can re-jigger things to knock the slow connections down in priority (or some comparable solution), they're doomed to be a victim of their own success. I guess the other possibility would be for a minimum bandwidth requirement for the software to enforce. Perhaps some enterprising person will write a Gnutella that only allows, say, 144 Kbps and up connections on the network.
It would be interesting, though cruel, to relegate all the dialup people to second-class citizen status, but it would allow Gnutella to scale a lot past the existing limits.
- -Josh Turiel
Re:needs: Better GUI and User Friendliness (Score:2)
It is a known fact that taking a step back in the development process can take a HUGE hit on development time. Who the hell wants to do that w/a product that has no intent to be released as an important project in the first place?
/me is sticking to IRC
Re:Idea -- SOLUTION (Score:2)
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If the network is fragmenting (Score:3)
Re:oh, *please* (Score:2)
Yes, the Internet works for a reason, and that reason is that I can inject my TCP/IP packet into it and any point and reasonably expect it to reach any other point.
This is why IRC is less popular than, say, AIM or ICQ, and always will be.
The Internet is the opposite of subdivision; if subdivision were the right approach, we'd all be using BBSes again, and even Fidonet wouldn't exist.
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Re:oh, *please* (Score:2)
This tells me you missed my point; with AIM you can talk to all AIM users, not just Efnet AIM users or Dalnet AIM users or etc.
(Or to more than one person simultaneously.)
This tells me you don't know how to use AIM or ICQ.
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Why can't you blend P2P with Client/Server? (Score:2)
This would facilitate a hybrid network with servers run by anybody that chooses to run one, in any country, so it is safe to say that the servers cannot be shut down by an authority, especially since anyone can just set up another and join it to the network. This way we only have the server-machines communicating so it reduces the load on the network and brings gnutella's problems back to a manageable level. The client machines simply find themselves a server and then figure out where best to link to the network and go from there.
Seems that gnutella's problem is that it is too distributed. Granted, a p2p system can idealistically work, but I don't think we have the bandwidth for it. If the network was more static than it is it would also work but since it is ever changing it makes it much harder to track everything.
So, has anyone ever tried anything like this before? Did it work? If not can those problems be solved? Any networking gurus out there care to take a shot at this? It can't be a new idea, it's just too obvious.
Re:True P2P applications have this limitation (Score:2)
The solution is ersatz election of servers by some means. This would cause the servers to change randomly. There still would really be no server.
If we could trust what people said about the bandwidth of their links, the election wouldn't actually be too hard.
And you call me a troll? hah (Score:2)
No, it's not at all like the internet and it's hardly "rapidly" evolving.
Gotta love rhetoric. Free the "people" from the tyranny of the admins! Gimme a break. I'm not nearly that old. What I haven't, and never will get over, are the fundamentals of success. Perhaps YOU are the one that is out of touch with reality? Afterall, empirically speaking, GNUtella hardly works for anyone.
You can propose all these theoretical means by which GNUtella can "fix" itself, but it's simply not reality yet. Furthermore, a great many of these theories at least require a significant change in the code base. So please, watch your tongue.
I never said GNUtella is just for warez/mp3/porn. What I said, if you care to read, is that GNUtella's real value is for IRC-type people (i.e., _groups_ people that know each other online and are somewhat technically competent) for getting warez/mp3/porn.
No where did I imply that this was somehow "evil". Though I do have some reservations about outright piracy, I simply never even hinted at it in this post. You, obviously, know as well as I do, that this is where the bulk of the bandwidth on these so-called p2p services go. It's a relevant fact. Deal with it.
No thank you. (Score:3)
In my opinion, the only thing that something as trivial as GNUtella is good for, ironically, is the IRC types. Who could form psuedo-private loose knit "networks" from which they can share warez/mp3/porn with their "friends" without the need for a dependable server (i.e., just join the channel find an IP and connect to it)
Re:GNUtella is mostly useless. (Score:1)
Update/feedback: "move-away-from keywords" (Score:1)
Of course, you could expedite the whole thing by searching for stuff that describes you even if you'll never download it.
I was thinking clients like this could integrate into the current network by using a specially formatted search term right when they first connect -- a properly formatted reply would mean "connect to me instead, I'm neighborhood-aware too".
Leverage "location" to make network size irrelevan (Score:3)
Have clients keep some keywords about the user. It could be a user-written paragraph, the names of shared files, recent search requests, etc. Clients would also have a "horizon" H: clients within H hops are considered "local". Clients can query other local clients for their keywords, and determine how similar those keywords are to their own (maybe a percent).
Define a "crawl" to be dropping one (low-keyword-match) direct connection and forming a new direct connection to a local node. You might decrease search response times by crawling repeatedly toward higher keyword-matching nodes.
Imagine a "speed" setting, measured in crawls per minute. There could also be a "randomness" setting, to misrepresent percent-keyword-match by a random amount for each local node. These settings could decrease over time, so you gradually lock in to a suitable local community without getting caught at the nearest local maximum. This idea is borrowed from simulated annealing, which someone else here probably understands better than I.
Is it possible to integrate such clients into the existing network, through search and search-response packets with a ttl of H?
Your horizon defines a neighborhood of local nodes. Their shared files will likely be of interest to you, so your client software might list them. In addition, their _ideas_ might be of interest, so your client software could show you their keywords, and allow instant messaging. There could even be a local neighborhood chat, ignoring chat packets with (hops > H), and sending packets with (ttl = H).
Usage scenario: I heard a band on the radio; sounded kinda like some other bands A B and C; and the lyrics had something to do with X, although I don't think they used that word. I make sure to put A B and C in my keywords, push up the speed and randomness sliders, and wait for them to settle down. Then I start asking in the chat if anyone knows about .... Maybe someone helps me out, and puts up a sample mp3. I might even ask if there are other bands like that.
Current Napster/Gnutella/whatever software lets you find songs you've heard of by bands you've heard of. Gnutella neighborhoods could let you find music you've never heard of.
So; here's the rub: What's the best way to get people to buy into this? With snow just setting in here in Buffalo I have a lot of coding time; what's the best codebase to start from? Who should I convince? (and of course, what am I missing and how could this idea be made better?)
Thanks for reading this whole long thang.
Chris
Re:Idea -- SOLUTION (Score:1)
Let's look at query routing. With each node connecting to ~4 or more others, it's a pretty well connected graph. If a query doesn't get through one way, it will probably get through another way. End users wouldn't really see much of a difference because of this connectedness.
For instance, if there's a 1 in 10 chance that a packet is dropped at a given node instead of relayed, and each node is connected to 4 others, that's a very small chance that it will never make it through.
Responses, on the other hand will have to be sent using the current protocol, or at least have a negligible chance of being dropped (i.e. drop all queries before dropping a response). Perhaps one day there will be a reroute protocol that can get a response back over a different path. Something to think about...
At any rate, I don't you'd see any more repeat queries if they occassionally get dropped than you do otherwise.
Re:GNUtella is mostly useless. (Score:2)
IMAP, MIME, RFC822, SMTP, NNTP (Score:1)
Gnutella's Challenge? (Score:1)
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Basically turn it into Freenet (Score:1)
Re:technical advances... (Score:1)
It's already been done :) [junglemonkey.net]
- Al
Re:More evidence of P2P's weakness (Score:2)
I agree completely. It was not my intent to imply that P2P is uselss, merely that it's a poor fit for problems where scalability is a major design issue. "Hybrid vigor" is a very real phenomenon in computing.
More evidence of P2P's weakness (Score:5)
This is a bandwagon that just won't roll very far, and the reason - as usual - is obvious to people who've studied the field for a while. Naively implemented, a P2P protocol tends to generate O(n^2) messages for a given workload, where N is the number of nodes. This can often be brought down to O(n) but only with absolutely top-notch developers and a lot of effort. Better than O(n) is usually impossible.
By contrast, hierarchical systems tend to hover between O(n) and O(log(n)) depending on the particular problem. This does not necessarily apply only to single-rooted hierarchies, either. A multi-rooted hierarchy tends to exhibit the same scaling behavior, though of course the more roots you have the more you start to look like P2P and share its scaling characteristics.
The long and the short of it is that P2P just doesn't scale well. Even the best-implemented P2P protocol can merely approach the message efficiency of a naively implemented hierarchical protocol. For large numbers of nodes this results in the P2P implementation simply getting swamped. The only question is how large and how swamped it has to be before it becomes unusable.
gnutella on darwin (Score:3)
Darwin Gnutella [tripod.com]
Regards,
proclus [tripod.com]
what is the best Linux client? (Score:1)
Any suggestions?
LL
Fragmented networks (Score:1)
Sure I'd probably run it up and leave it going on a cable line for a while but will this affect the benefits that the reflector would bring to other users and how much is it likely to detract from my network usage?
Re:oh, *please* (Score:1)
-_QUinn
Re: (Score:1)
Re:just have an option that says your bandwith typ (Score:1)
Re:Germany, Japan, Canada (Score:1)
The problem with MojoNation (Score:1)
just have an option that says your bandwith type (Score:4)
Slur on Christmas Island (Score:4)
cx is a country TLD. Why should you call the whole of Christmas Island sleasy because of one goat who lives there?
Re:oh, *please* (Score:1)
Re:More evidence of P2P's weakness (Score:3)
Efficiency is not the only issue in P2P... anonymity is one, and another is to inject a type of fault-tolerance into a heirarchal system by allowing for more dynamic assignemnt of heirarchal roles where appropriate...
Also, since many P2P schemes are built on top of TCP/IP, the option to build a dynamic, hybrid system is much easier, since a heirarchal system lies beneath at the addressing and transport level... You can leverage the messaging efficiency of the heiarchy once you've done discovery through pure P2P, and can also overlay anonymous P2P over the heirarchy for things like Freenet style file sharing...
P2P and Heirarchy both have their strengths and weakenesses, and particularly clever developers can pool strengths without amplifying weakenesses and get some pretty neat systems...
Query Bandwith is the real threshold (Score:1)
Re:No thank you. (Score:1)
I have to disagree. I think a split would be the best thing that could happen, because then I might search for things that interest me and not be bothered by all those
/SS
Re:More evidence of P2P's weakness (Score:1)
Re:Idea: (scalable and distributed) (Score:4)
* Automatic mirroring nodes
Mojonation block-servers remember what blocks seem to be popular (most requested), and if they dont have them, they may go grab a copy to mirror locally.
Nodes would automatically mirror data from local (fast) mirrors, so that it's more accessible.
See above. Data that is popular is automatically mirrored. When data is published to the network, dual-redundancy is used to avoid losing the data if some blocks turn up missing. Think RAID. Well, no, not exactly, but it is somewhat redundant.
It's called a content tracker, and anyone can run one on Mojonation. There are two central "master publication trackers" (MPT's) that keep lists of all publication servers, and the clients retrieve this list initially from them. There are possible plans to distribute the MPT's as well.
Content Security
All of the content posted to the network would have meta-moderation on it; anyone can classify data, and mark it as such.
There is currently no 'rating system' in mojonation, but it is something being looked at, barring the technical hurdles in doing so.
Privacy
If possible, I'd like to see users IP addresses hidden; only have a unique login name/password setup for security; but this may make hackers/spammers hard to track and ban, but hopefully the meta-moderation would filter out most of it.
I'm not sure if Mojonation is going to go this route eventually, but if ya use TCP/ip, you can be traced eventually anyway. UDP is unreliable.. As for data privacy, Mojonation actually chops a file up into small blocks, then encrypts those blocks, and distributes them randomly. Then it send the description and block locations to the master server. In essence, nobody knows whats in each individual block on their server (if they run a storage server); everything is encrypted. I am breezing past all the details [mojonation.net] here, feel free to read more [mojonation.net] about it if you wish.
Volunteers
Anybody?
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mojo nat ion/ [sourceforge.net]
Re:Germany, Japan, Canada (Score:1)
GNUtella is mostly useless. (Score:1)
I hope this gets better with all this caching servers for gnutella in development.
*sigh* (Score:1)
--DV
"Kermit the frog, cuz he gets all the hos!"
State of the Art (Score:2)
In the Open Source P2P project I am working on, xS (http://xs.dasein.org [dasein.org]), I have built in a pluggable network layer that literally enables the ability to add new protocols to the application on the fly. Thus, if the rest of xS rocks but the network protocol sucks, it is easy to write support for a new protocol!
Re:oh, *please* (Score:1)
Dialups can connect to reflectors (Score:2)
The article suggested using the clip2 Reflector Server (or is it servent) for dialups to connect to. An interesting way to propogate this further would be to restrict dialups to *only* be able to connect to reflector servers and also encourage the operation of the reflectors at node with a lot of bandwidth to spare.
This would also allow someone to develop a client that only allows peers of a certain bandwidth (say 144Kbps as was previously suggested) to connect to the network; then the dialups (and really slow DSL customers, sorry Verizon ;-)) could connect to reflector proxies. This would ensure that the network as a whole would remain low-latency and high bandwidth but that it would still be accessable to all.
Gnutella performance sucks (Score:2)
If Gnutella is going to succeed it needs to be more intelligent. Nodes shouldn't be hammered with search requests. Nodes need to be scored by their actual throughput of search data should be cached to make searches quicker.
Gnutella also needs anonymity and security features to prevent spyware from seeing what's going on, so it should be possible (though not mandatory) for a node to nominate a bunch of anonymizing servers that search and encrypted data packets ping-pong through before reaching their destination.
Re:Germany, Japan, Canada (Score:2)
Apparantly BT has a really strong monopoly.
Reputation Tracking (Score:5)
What good is all that... well, a host could make decisions about which queries to route and which to discard based on any information about the reputation of the originator. Hosts would allow faster sends to downloaders with good reputation. Abusive hosts (Spammers, DoS attacks, etc) would ruin their reputation quickly (or keep recreating new keys all with no reputation).
Reputation in such a system would be very valuable. Somewhat like slashdot karma, it would appeal to many individuals, who would likely go out of their way to gain reputation signatures, perhaps by providing or mirroring lots of high quality files, attaching good meta-data descriptions to files, etc. The client software would need to have ways for everyone to do moderation on files and users... but unlike slashdot, there would be no universal score, only lots of keys/reputation scores, signed by other users. The software could also automatically detect certain behaviors (files available for download, on-line for long times) of other hosts, and issue reputation points. The idea is that a reputation score is to have a way to allocate the available resources (mainly bandwidth), to establish an incentive for users to share files and act in ways that benefit the network, and of course to make the network resiliant to abuse.
Now, for a system like this to scale, each host will need a LOT of disk space, to store a giant database of keys and signatures on them, and it would ultimately act like a giant cache. Each host would obviously collect the most positive signatures... the initial communication would be similar to boasting, the requester would send several of the best moderation signatures, hoping that the remote host already knows those people who signed and will therefore offer faster transfers, propagate a query farther, etc.
Maybe this ultimately works out to be the same as digital cash in MojoNation. I believe it is a different idea, in that it's based on an assumption of abundance.... everybody can win. You can get a great reputation without someone else giving up anything. In a cash system, when you get cash (mojo), someone else gives it up, and the overall philosophy is of scarcity.
If you have any ideas or thoughts to add to this, please post. Am I totally out in left field here, or does this seem like a reasonable idea?
oh, *please* (Score:4)
It doesn't have to cover the entire Internet. The fact that you can simply specify a server to contact makes the solution so obvious that I can't believe people are still whining.
Let Gnutella split into multiple networks. It worked for IRC, it will work here, and it will work for similar problems in the future. Any problem that doesn't lend itself well to subdivision is probably badly specified. Don't forget that the Internet is a network of networks, and it works well for a reason.
GNUTELLA *has* catastrophically failed (Score:2)
But that ISN'T because P2P is a bad idea, it is purely the bad, partly closed source, implementation and specifications of GNUTELLA.
There's no particular reason that horizons shouldn't still be 5000+. In fact even more than that, as the GNUTELLA protocol is quite bandwidth inefficient. It may be possible to more than double the number of hosts within the horizon by being more efficient.
e.g. nearly half of the current overhead is in the TCP packet headers. Sending bigger, less frequent messages would reduce the overhead percentage greatly and give much more "useful" throughput. (If you think Britney Spears is useful
I thought it was just one big pr0n network (Score:2)
Users continue to query the network primarily for audio, video, image, and program files
Well, THAT just about covers EVERY file in EXISTENCE! Seriously, though, I thought that video and image would be in the vast majority. We all know that people would would waste their time with the seriously slow download speeds of Gnutella are probably the kind who don't get out much, and, well... you get the picture.
Heard something about a SubNet (Score:1)
Re:Gimme my fix (Score:1)
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Maybe the problem is social, not technical. (Score:2)
So is it surprising that we don't observe a lot of altruistic behavior from people with this kind of antisocial personality, linked together on an anonymous network, doing things that are illegal? Is it surprising that people who are too cheap to buy a Metallica CD are also too cheap to pay for cable modem, buy CDs, rip them, and put them on the network? Here we have a lot of people who think that information freedom is all about taking, and not about creating and giving back; is it surprising that gnutella is languishing at the 0.x stage?
If you want information to be free, make some free information. Start a garage band, and stop whining about the nonintuitive user interface in the gnutella software you downloaded for free.
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yet another suggestion & question (Score:3)
Clients Can query the larger 'unsegmented' net to determine the 'subnetted' network extensions:
5.6.7.8:warez;
9.0.1.2:pron;
3.4.5.6:warez;
ect.
This could probably be implemented without breaking the existing clients and network where only Gnutella 'v2' clients would be able to choose a subnet to join. When the "MP3Z" network grows to the breakpoint - someone starts a MP3ZZ network.
As a side note: Has an organization or project formed on any collective level to address these problems? Is there a 'recognized' authority that is guiding the 'official' Gnutella protocol and a reference implementation? Gnutella is a very necessary model to pursue and develop because of the threat to Napster (though OpenNap provides a mechanism to thwart the $RIAA$MPAA$ whores - there is still the problem of having 'servers' to identify and attack (not to mention the problem that Napigator will have when Napster is finally shut down...))
Re:No thank you. (Score:2)
Splitting into subnetworks is not only feasable and desirable, it has already been done in at least one case that I know of (and use).
There is a thriving and growing subnet known as ABMnet, which is a spin-off of binary newsgroups. People primarily trade missing individual posts that don't show up on their individual servers rather than entire binaries. In other words, if you're just missing Something.R23 you now stand a very good chance of finding it on ABMnet instead of filling up the newsgroup with repost requests.
The S/N ratio is very low because all users are there for one small purpose. You don't have to deal with 8,000 "Britney Spears Topless" searches, and by being a small niche network it promotes a sense of community which encourages more file sharing.
There is no network admin, no physical location, no centralization. In short, it's a ragtag and volatile collection of different IP addresses.
Hmm. Sounds just like the greater internet as a whole, but evolving at a faster rate. So, why exactly is this bad? Are you an old mainframe guy who still hasn't gotten over the idea of individuals having power?
As for your assertion that this is just for "warez/mp3/porn", well, those three things, specifically porn, drive the vast majority of all network traffic now. What else is there that would encourage such large-scale sharing of files? This is reality. Deal with it.
Your troll was pretty good. Unfortunately, I don't think you were intentionally trolling.
I'll play. I'm bored. (Score:2)
First, it's not centralized anymore than Gnutella is. The client is virtually identical. Second, Gnutella was intended to be a niche product. It was written for mp3's and "oh yeah, you can trade other stuff with it, too, I guess". Based on the report it is very arguable that all the non-mp3 trading is what is bogging down the network.
From your first post:
GNUtella may be an interesting idea, but it's nothing more than a hack.
There is a strong implication in your statement, reinforced elsewhere, that because Gnutella can't be everything for everybody it is useless and should be discarded. I have given you one concrete example of a use that fills a very real need, at least as far as users are concerned. Not only does it make one certain type of file sharing much easier, it also substantially increases efficiency by decreasing redundancy on already over-loaded news servers.
So, you're partly right. Gnutella isn't, and can't be, everything for everybody. It's not supposed to replace http, ftp, etc. It's simply a better means for one type of file transfer.
Why spend hours wandering acres of mall space looking for something when you can go right to the specialty store that has what you need? Or, to use another analogy, why throw away the allen wrenches just because most people use screws?
I still don't see anything wrong with splintering protocols if they serve genuine needs, and Gnutella is quickly and admirably growing into roles that it is suitable for.
Re:True P2P applications have this limitation (Score:1)
Re:oh, *please* (Score:1)
Well, it doesn't scale. In it's current incarnation Gnutella isn't worth shit. I hear Freenet does nice things with automatic mirroring atc. something which gnutella definately needs.
Let Gnutella split into multiple networks.
Gnutella could be split into multiple networks based on content, one for music, one for movies etc. Geography could (should) also be used, let Europe and America have separate networks, downloading from an overseas modem user is just dumb. Still, the protocol does need work to become usable.
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Fragmentation is bad (Score:1)
When it comes to a system like Gnutella then the increasing fragmentation that has arisen due to bandwidth problems can only be a bad thing in the long run, because it means that what was originally a resource allowing you to search through a huge amount of material becomes much more limited, encouraging people to stop using it.
Consider a small Gnutella network of about 50 machines. What do you think is going to be on there? Considering most users are leeches who don't want to share their own files, chances are that most of the available content will be popular crap such as Brittany Spears or Metallica. There will only be a very limited selection of minority music, and this will mean that people get fed up pretty quickly.
But when you have a strong, centralised database or a large network then the amount of minority music will be corresponding larger, meaning that everybody has a wider selection of music, making it a more popular service. There's less temptation to give up on it in this case.
It's a general property of this kind of system - smaller, local networks just can't offer the benefits that a larger or more centralised network can in terms of content and diversity. And if Gnutella continues to fragment, it'll reach the point where there won't be any point in using it.
Legal use of gnutella (Score:1)
Reduced accessibility (Score:2)
Over the space of the last six months the percentage of network content has dropped from 95% to now only 48.19%.
I think this percentage will drop even more in the next 6 months.
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Re:Fragmentation is bad (Score:2)
The problem with gnutella (Score:2)
Gnutella fragged! Three frags left! (Score:1)
Personally, I think that there should be nag lines whenever you download something ('tis better to give than to receive, leeches can't suck blood forever, et cetera). The condonation of the leech society must stop. You pay taxes to support your home country, so why don't you set up a Gnutellanet server to support Gnutella?
Re: Doesn't that contradict Open Source? (Score:1)
Idea: (Score:5)
Automatic mirroring nodes
Nodes would automatically mirror data from local (fast) mirrors, so that it's more accessible. It would need to "learn" what files are requested, and then mirror them. What would stop the script kiddies from "rating" the content they want up, so it would be mirrored more often?
Structure
If all of the clients are required to keep a copy of the "whole database", it is not feasible without everyone on the network having a T3+, or later OC3+ connection. But as with the data, the nodes keep track of other nodes, but only if the bandwidth permits. 56k clients could connect and ask the "net" of super nodes for the queries on content. No one node should be in control; but many based on the same rule set. You would have to have a setting on the client for "perm super-node", or just "56k browser". Even the 56k browser could contribute to the network however; two 56k modems that are on the same segment of 'net can transmit with very low latency; they can buffer queries from the super nodes, and allow for faster access.
Content Security
All of the content posted to the network would have meta-moderation on it; anyone can classify data, and mark it as such. People can also rate classifcations; so to prevent some spam. If a file with the same name shows up on the 'net, it could end up with the same rating. (my_garage_band_called_nirvana_that_nobody_has_he
I'm sure that folks have a complex yet effect methods of rating. (flame wars may ensue) but I'd be really interested in hearing ideas.
Privacy
If possible, I'd like to see users IP addresses hidden; only have a unique login name/password setup for security; but this may make hackers/spammers hard to track and ban, but hopefully the meta-moderation would filter out most of it.
Volunteers
Anybody?
-Eric Johanson - ericj.spambad@cubesearch.com
This sig for rent
question (Score:1)
- Why is it the case that it is not possible to find mp3's on web pages (for which good search engines exist) while you can find them on napster or gnutella?
- Why do people talk about freeriding on gnutella and not on napster?
Gimme my fix (Score:2)
Germany, Japan, Canada (Score:2)
There are some cool charts examining the
-Duke
Re:GNUtella is mostly useless. (Score:1)
Re:GNUtella is mostly useless. (Score:1)
its much better than Gnutella and Scour
Re:Gimme my fix (Score:1)
Re:Idea: (Score:1)
Re:needs: Better GUI and User Friendliness (Score:1)
Re:*sigh* (Score:1)
Use CuteMX! (Score:1)
Not exactly (Score:1)
True P2P Can't Scale? Take a look at Freenet
Freenet is not actually P2P. It is a redundant global index similar in fashion to URLs.
Re:Gnutella's Challenge? (Score:1)
I was pronouncing it GA-NUT-ELLA
gnutella is horrible. (Score:1)
Re:gnutella is horrible. (Score:1)
Undoubtedly this will get a reply such as "well those who should use gnutella will know how to use it", thus showing off the elitism of slashdot again.
Gnutella suffers the same development problem that linux suffers - its ran by elitists who havent a clue about how the majority of people in the real world doesnt know (or care) how a computer works, just so long as its easy to use and works correctly, forever relegating it to "that other software".
Re:Why can't you blend P2P with Client/Server? (Score:1)
The Answer to the GNUtella Problem (Score:1)
When you search for the word "linux" your host will ping the first host in the host list, if the host is unpingable, it is removed from the database and the next is pinged. If it does reply to the ping, then you send the query to the host... It returns all the "linux" files it has and then says goodbye. Your client queries the next machine in the list and so on. This way you only need about the same ammount of bandwidth it takes to search a normal search engine like yahoo.com.
Queries will still take time for those on modems but at least it will work no matter how dense the network gets or how slow your connection is!
Feel free to email me with any insight/comments/questions about this.
Re:oh, *please* (Score:1)
Seems to me than someone *COUGH* ^ Bell *COUGH* is just waiting for Gnutella to die for some reason. Got a bet going Tawko?
Re:needs: Better GUI and User Friendliness (Score:1)
What good is a product if the core is bad? Oh, it may look nice, such that any fool could use it, but if it barfs everytime you do something users will just walk away. And all because the development effort went in to the user interface and not the architecture.
Is there any reason it couldn't be a command line app? Probably not. Anyone remember archie for ftp searching? It was a tool that worked.
technical advances... (Score:3)
Hundreds of monkeys, eating bananas, swingin' away on ropes, with their brains hooked together with wireless broadband technology, all for the purpose of file sharing!
And before anyone gets a change to say it...
There... it's been said.
Thank-you, and good day!
needs: Better GUI and User Friendliness (Score:4)
Napster, and then Scour, both simplified their application so any nitwit (even some mac users using macster) could gain access to the resources.
A better interface as well as some way to have the top hosts from gnutellahosts.com automatically be used everytime the application is loaded up is definately a must.
What the developers need to do is try a rapid prototyping model . As much as I hated it while doing that damn internship, it really does work. People need to be surveyed on how the application should work. The only way to come up with a good product which cathes the broadest audience is to get feedback from that audience.
Thats enough bs from me.
Re:Germany, Japan, Canada (Score:1)
they are counting canadian isps as us-centric. dont believe those numbers. they are wrong. canada has the highest internet use per capita. and also the highest high speed internet use per capita, the type of people who use this kind of app. if they did a true breakdown you would see canada at #2 easily. and #1 if it were per capita.. also easily.
Re:Germany, Japan, Canada (Score:1)