Slashdot Mirror
Overcoming the Network Effects?
paul_harrison asks: "I am trying to introduce a new
P2P protocol. It's technically superior in several respects to existing protocols, but there's one big problem: too few people using it. Now this is not a new problem, there's even a name for it, "Network Effect". It crops up all over the place: which websites become popular, which formats and protocols people use, which operating systems people use, even which side of the road people drive on...
So my question is this: how do things like these overcome network effects and become popular?"
This work doesn't solve any new problems and is essentially the same as Chord , a project at MIT, which has the same basic layout but in a more structured fashion (as far as I can tell from his slides). Chord came out over a year ago (they submitted to last year's SIGCOMM which would have been due in early 2001). He mentions that they're very similar, but as far as I can tell, there is nothing new in his implementation and it isn't necessarily as good. The Chord guys actually prove how fast their system works while he just waves his hands. They also have a paper about how to actually implement a p2p file system over it (I think they give a reference to someone who actually did it too).
There's no good reason this work should have been accepted. Whoever reviewed for this linux.conf.au dropped the ball in a big way. A real academic reviewer would have eaten him alive it.
No one has the ability to remove you from the network, or control ("censor") what you share. However, you are not completely anonymous on the network, and if you share something illict you can be found if someone really wants to (which this fellow apparently does).