NETI@Home to Examine Net's Strengths

UnresolvedExternal writes "Wired is reporting about Georgia Tech researchers who want thousands of computer users to install their program to help them monitor traffic patterns on the Internet. They plan to use the data to strengthen the Net and unblock bottlenecks."

Too late, I'm booked!

[Anonymous Coward]

All the spammers want me to install their software to help them get around bottlenecks.

and the resources

[__aahlyu4518]

and the financial resources to unblock those bottlenecks are raised with the money they make from selling those 'traffic patterns' to anyone who bids...

Do something much more worthwhile. FOLD!!!

[Nick Driver]

If you're going to run any of these kinds of distributed clients, then you should run Folding@Home [stanford.edu] instead. The fruits of this work might just help save yours or a loved one's life someday.

Sounds like a perfect worm candidate

[jerky42]

and you could tell who hasnt patched their machines.

low, medium, high settings

[zogger]

just looked at their THIS AIN'T SPYWARE, RILLY! page. Well, what else is it but that? Of course it is, just for their claim to be a benevolent purpose, it's "whitehat" spying to be totally fair about it. But, we don't know if any "blackhats" will get the information over to the university, or--well, if any foreign states might have an interest in it and some of the juicer info gets transferred to some other places that might have a different idea on what to do with the information. Could be, anyone who's seen the demographics at most unis would have to agree, and tech has a lot of students that might have loyalties other than what is publically presented here. Just a note, but it's valid.

The high security setting is the one I predicteth gets used the most by people who run it, for obvious reasons.

hmm, probable bottlenecks. Whenever the latest mega worm hits you'll see which routers choke easiest. Massive constant traffic from owned and zombiefied end users home machines, that should be fairly random and even. Pockets/areas where file sharing is still big. And places with a derth of fat pipes obviously.

Interesting project, but I will have to think on it some if I want to run it. Also, maybe I am not seeing it, but it doesn't seem to have any info on how much of your machine it uses, I see the operating system requirements,installation, etc, but not the resources required. Anyone see that? My apologies if I missed it.

"Strengthen the Net"?

[heironymouscoward]

One of the defining characteristics of the Net seems to have been its ability to defy planning and design.

Even simply "increasing capacity" without addressing specific bottlenecks is often a waste of time. Look at the heavy investment in fibre-optics, most of which lies unused as new technology squeezes more and more out of existing cables.

Call me a cynic, but such projects sound more like fun for research grants than useful for real life.

My humble opinion of the Net is that it is a largely a self-steering phenomena that feeds on change and technology cycles. Since you can't predict change, and you can't prevent the technology cycles that cause it, it's meaningless to hope to plan this.

Re:I don't think so...

[parksie]

I doubt NETI@home will use a significant amount of your CPU time.

Re:I don't think so...

[lambent]

Different people value things differently.

For example, a concerted effort to improve the quality of the net infrastructure could lead to more efficient distributed computing platforms, which means that eventually someone would write an improved folding program.

It's akin to an old computer science problem ... you can start a heavily computational algorithm now, and waste your time, or wait a few years for computers to be many times faster, and then do the parts of the calculation that you put off in a fraction of the time. Or wait a little longer ...

So, some people do the work now, and others work to improve the systems we use to do work. Seems worthwhile to me.

Personally, I run chessbrain [chessbrain.net].

Re:NEWSFLASH!

[Ghengis]

I agree with you. Being able to read the source sets my mind at ease. The only problem is that the general public will not read the source. They will just remain paranoid, because many cannot understand the source. Another potential problem is someone altering the source to skew the results. This is one reason why they need *alot* of people to do it... so that someone doing this source hack has less of an impact on the total results.

Not In My BackYard

[sciop101]

When does research data become intelligence data? If research data shows a possible criminal pattern, is NETI(Georgia Tech) responsible to report to the authorities/law enforcement? Can Georgia Tech afford not to report? In this day it is refreshing to find researcher naivete. "to make the Internet faster and more reliable" "where it will be analyzed and made available to anyone else who wants to use it for their own Internet improvement projects"

Re:"Strengthen the Net"?

[jimsum]

I disagree, I think the extra information might be valuable. As an analogy, suppose you could put instrumentation in cars to determine how people drive. With this information you might be able to simulate a road system, and perhaps determine which light timings maximize traffic flow. Maybe traffic is too complicated for something like this to work, and certainly building a new mall will change traffic patterns, but you have to collect the information and try it before you know for sure.

Uh oh

[Raul654]

I hate to tell you, but U,X,W et al are virtual simulator states - they only exist when you simulate your VHDL code. Once you synthesize them into hardware, it's either a 1, 0, or indeterminant (in rare when you measure it as it is crossing the threshold). Good luck on your exam ;)