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Collapsing P2P Networks
Andrew writes "I'm a undergraduate at the University of Washington, and after seeing this article on Salon, I dusted off a paper I had written last year. I examined P2P networks under a model usually used in describing animal populations, and found that it may be possible to cause a collapse in the network based on the intrinsic nature of the technology. Just as in animal populations, P2P networks require a sizable "critical mass" of users, and overharvesting can cause a systemic collapse - what if this were done on purpose? Quite ominously, my second recommendation on disruption was carrying damaged or incorrectly named files. You can read theabstract and the actual paper"
Read page 17 and 18.
Because everyone knows but none have yet said it.
Sharereactor/Edonkey cannot be flooded with damaged or renamed files and neither can any other network/client that relies on hashes of the downloads to ensure the file is the same.
As for using loads of bandwidth by doing loads of useless searches in an automated way, it would be very interesting to see how the different networks coped with this, especially the "next gen" edonkey, which is called "flock" and is in beta, and is supposed to use no servers...
graspee
Many populations have a critical population level, and if they fall below that level they have a low probability of rebounding. For example, fruit fly maggots are more efficient when eating in groups and cannot survive if they cannot get enough eggs on the same fruit.
By the way if you pick up an ecology journal you are likely to find at least one paper on this subject. Trying to understand the Allee effect is an important aspect of understanding an organism and how it interacts with its environment.
I think this is one case where they could simply set up some distributed PC's (different IP's in different class C's) and just have P2P clients serving 'bad' versions of their own copyrighted music.
,to some extent. ... at 20k or so, I'm not interested. But still, it means somebody's written a client that replies to the P2P network with flawed data deliberately.
Somebody is already doing this
Searches on gnutella (for just about anything) bring up hits with file names like "your search terms.MPG"
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
- Finally a little question for the P2P junks out there: many people claim they get to learn new kinds of music by P2P sharing. I won't say it isn't true, but how? You still need a handle to search new stuff? You just type in random keywords, or what? Just curious, because I'd like to broaden my musical horizonts a bit.
Some suggestions:- Read music magazines to get an idea of bands you might like.
- Do a search for a band/song you like, and then, for the users that give results, search those users' music collections and download stuff you don't know.
- Random words in the search terms.
- Search by style. E.g. "Jazz" might bring up "The Best Of 20th Century Jazz" or "Acid Jazz Hits" albums, or something along those lines.
- Internet radio stations. They often have a larger range of music than normal radio, and often split by style. Example: Radio Free Virgin.
- Hang out on #mp3 channels on IRC and wait for the requests and sends to appear on the channel. Pick and choose any that sound interesting.
- Seach lyrics sites by random words, and download those songs (useful when you want to fit a song to a specific purpose, say on a film or presentation.)
I have had a lot of success with these methods.