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"

Comments

sinister motive?

[potcrackpot]

The practice of flooding the system with bad files is far more sinister than most of us realise.

This is actually the next step in the Taliban's fight against capitalism. They are continuing their religious war, attempting to reduce our morale by preventing us listening to music, except in short frustrating bursts of the same 10 seconds.

Their aim is to reduce us, to bring us down from within by sabotaging our right to Good Music In MP3 Format.

We Will NOT give in.

Uh, wait. Why did they start with 'No Doubt'?

Well, atleast we know who skipped maths lessons

[GnomeKing]

In particular, our analysis of the model leads to three potential strategies, which can be used in conjunction:

1. Randomly selecting and litigating against users engaging in piracy
2. Creating fake users that carry (incorrectly named or damaged files)
3. Broadcasting fake queries in order to degrade network performance
4. Selectively targeting litigation against the small percentage of users that carry the majority of the files

Re:Well, atleast we know who skipped maths lessons

[Saeger]

1. Randomly selecting and litigating against users engaging in piracy

countermeasure: encryption + the bad press that randomly sueing upstanding citizens would bring.

2. Creating fake users that carry (incorrectly named or damaged files)

countermeasure: webs of trust & md5 hashes.

3. Broadcasting fake queries in order to degrade network performance

countermeasure: evolve to shun the DoS nodes (again, webs of trust & a 'witness system' needed).

4. Selectively targeting litigation against the small percentage of users that carry the majority of the files

countermeasure: This being the most effective [scare] tactic of the four, the best way to deflect it would be hiding your identity, or somehow spreading everything available very thin (freenet style) for plausible deniability, or serving from offshore, or rotating selections...

--

Re:Well, atleast we know who skipped maths lessons

[LordLucless]

Yes, you can probably counter all these tactics, but they would still do their job.

If the labels can force p2p networks into a more complex model, it culls the less technically able users. I think if the p2p music sharing networks evolved into systems requiring md5 hash lookups, trust networks and other countermeasures, Joe Schmoe wouldn't be bothered using them. He wants something he can just hook up to, grab stuff, and leave.

Music piracy has always happened. Its just booming now. They just want to stop the boom, not eradicate it entirely.

Ask a silly question...

[CaptainAlbert]

From the introduction in the paper:

> This paper aims to address the following
> questions:
> 1. How must the depensation model be modified
> in order to account for conceptual
> differences between P2P networks and animal
> populations?
> 2. What are the conditions necessary to cause
> catastrophes in P2P networks?
> 3. What does the model imply about other ways
> to limit or stop P2P networks?
> 4. What is the most effective method to stop
> P2P networks?

I bet if you'd set out to answer a more interesting question, you'd have obtained a more interesting answer.

Natural populations are well known for their ability to adapt to their environment; to mutate or change their behaviour in response to stimuli (threats) in their surroundings. If you truly wish to study P2P networks as if they are ecosystems or populations, there are plenty of more productive entymological questions to be asked.

This paper reads like a biologist saying "given, say, fish - how can we go about killing them?"

Nice to see *some* scientific analysis of this subject, however misdirected.

Re:Ask a silly question...

[capt.Hij]

Some native populations have an amazing capacity for rebounding. This is especially true of insect populations which have a reputation of getting through population bottlenecks better than any other animal. However, the "Allee effect" is a well known biological phenomenon.

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.

Re:Start of a bad trend

[oakbox]

Isn't that the point though? You can't go to court suing Sony because they created a lot of damaged versions of their songs. How does this sound?

"I was trying to download an illegal copy of their copyrighted music and it was damaged!"

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. Set up a little consortium of several different records companies, and it becomes DAMN hard to apply an effective filter.

You might counter by setting up a central key list of 'correct' MD5 checksums, but then THAT list becomes a target of litigation from the RIAA.

I don't like it, but it is an elegant solution. Use the power of P2P against itself. Anonymity works both ways.

Er, what?

[Rogerborg]

This is hardly news. I can't remember the last time that I shared a music file from gnutella that was correctly named, labelled, untruncated and not a radio edit (mea non culpla, the first thing that I do is to fix the damn things, before making them available for re-sharing).

For exe's, it's even worse. There seems to be a deliberate misnamimg of some files, e.g. GTA2 labelled as GTA3, or in some bizarre cases files named as "game Foo (actually game Bar)". What on earth is the point of that? If you're warning that there are misnamed versions out there with this filesize, then say that, otherwise just name it correctly and be done with it.

Porn is the worst of all. I've lost count of the number of god damn bangbus promos (or worse, trailers that spawn popups) that I've shared and ditched, and I'm now so sick of it that I won't download anything under 5MB (most of the trailers are smaller than that).

What I can't understand in all this is that I'm sharing these from other gnutella users. Sure, they are injected through malice (or avarice), but what is wrong in the heads of users that they don't understand that this is our network, and our responsibility to clean up the file naming? Nobody is going to step in and do it for us. It's only going to get worse over time, and I'd rather download three different but accurately named versions of the same file than one misnamed version that turns out to be another badly encoded asian lipstick lesbian popup spawning commercial.

Repeat the mantra: our network, our responsibility.

Re:MD5, etc.

[jawtheshark]

The main issue is so-called leaching.

While I agree entirely with the fact that leeching is a problem, you should consider these facts:

• Not many people have the bandwith to share. I don't, I share nevertheless but restrict upload speed to 3KByte/second and 2 allowed connections. Why? I have only DSL 256/64kbps, which means I have about 8Kbyte/second upload and I give away a potential 6. I find that generous. This is however not enough! People do not have the patience to wait at these speeds, most of the time uploads that start on my machine (I check that from time to time) about 99% are cancelled by the remote side.
  Yet, I download! Most of the time pr0n, and from time to time music (usually when I heard a good song on the radio).
• Firewalls. I have a firewall... and I will not in any case turn it of because I want to run Gnucleus. This effectively reduces my own choices to download: anyone who runs a firewall too is not able to communicate with my machines. If everyone runs a firewall, P2P networks like Gnutella would become useless. PUSH only works when the receiver does not have a firewall.

So technically this makes me a leech: I want to share files but due to bandwidth restrictions and due to firewall issues my sharing-abilities are clearly diminished. I have the goodwill but not the resources.
It wouldn't be the first time a P2P client advertising T1 performance aborts me and I find that very frustrating. Probably people using the tools you mentioned, and considering me a leech. Nice... :-(

Oh, and one thing about the whole P2P thing I don't like are the insanely large filenames filled with idiot keywords. Keywords in filenames....tsss.... Better would be a kind of database that associates keywords with files you chose on your harddisk. At least that way your files could have halfway decent-length filenames. Of course maintaining that would be a bit of work, but maintaining a filesystem filled with junk-filenames isn't any better.

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.

Compare to the Tsetse fly approach

[iiii]

The comparison of P2P use and animal populations is fascinating, and although the parallels will be limited it might yield some useful ideas.

The most interesting parallel animal model has got to be the experiment designed to reduce (or eliminate) Tsetse fly (and other insects ) populations by releasing large numbers of sterilized males into the natural population.

The process of P2P sharing would correspond to mating, since you have to have two participants. A successful mating would correspond to a user getting the file they wanted, and therefore being more likely to use the service in the future. Getting a dud file is like a wild female mating with a sterilized male. Yields no offspring, user is less likely to continue using service. One or two cases of sterile matings have no impact, but when it is a significant percentage the population will decline, I'm sure the parallel with P2P holds.

The author seems focused on studying the best way to eliminate P2P, though, so he's probably hoping to get research grant money from RIAA.