Stanford Researchers Trying to Protect P2P Networks

dirvish writes "New Scientist has a story about efforts from researchers at Stanford to protect peer to peer networks from attacks that could be permitted by the proposed Berman Bill. Neil Daswani and Hector Garcia-Molina of the Database Research Department at Stanford University have mathematically modeled the Gnutella network to discriminate between nodes and supernodes. They then tested the nodes to find which rules could be applied to best avoid a malicious node on the network thus conserving bandwidth."

Comments

Re:But are their motives good?

[smd4985]

well, since i know neil (he is my brother) i can vouch that his motives are good. he is very opposed to the berman anti-p2p hacking bill and he feels that any attempt to hack p2p networks will just be foiled by better p2p infrastructure.
also, i'm not positive who is funding his research (that info is all public, if you look you can find out for sure), but i think it isn't corporate in nature - i think it is the defense dept. the US defense element has a high interest in securing p2p networks from attack since future military operations might be based on p2p technologies.

More Hollywood bad news from Congress

[Anonymous Coward]

And, of course, Jack Valenti has known Pelosi throughout her career and reminds, "She makes sure that our highest priority is protection of copyrights."

Re:JOIN the EFF. It helps.

[palme999]

Lobbying againt the right wing republicans and ashcroft is a good thing

I don't think it's the republicans you have to worry about. The democrats have been the ones pushing this legislation. A couple recent examples including the p2p bill in question:

CBDTPA (Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act) - Sponsored by Sen. Hollings (D-SC), co-sponsored by 4 other dems and one republican.

P2P Bill - Sponsered by Rep. Howard Berman (D-Cal)

Also take a look at how the Music/Movie industry spends their money. 17 of the top 20 recipients are Democrat.

TV/Movies/Music: Top 20 Recipients

Now who would you say is in the back pocket of the Movie/Music business?

Re:JOIN the EFF. It helps.

[Krow10]

Blockquoth operagost:

It ironic that you encourage people to fight for their rights by lobbying against one particular group, right-wing republicans. Everyone has the right to free speech, or else it is meaningless.

It is not at all ironic, since the freedom of speech does not imply the freedom from political opposition. That said, supporting bad laws is hardly the unique domain of legislators from any wing of any party.

Everyone knows that the ACLU is hardly an unbiased organization. They support the first amendment, but only to the extent that it doesn't impede their own leftist agenda. Meanwhile, other important rights, like self defense and religion, are ignored or even attacked.

While I agree that the ACLU has an agenda (as does the AARP, and other advocacy organizations) it is false to claim that the ACLU only defends the right to free speech unless it interferes with its leftist agenda. Unless by "free speech" you mean the right to threaten and intimidate those seeking to exercise something that the ACLU also considers a fundamental right. And even then, they are fairly strong in the support of speech: it was they who defended the Nazi's right to march in Skokie. As for your right to self defense, there are other organization that fight for that; and as for the right to religious expression, there is no other organization in the US that fights for the rights of all religious expression by private individuals and groups not using my tax dollars.

-Craig

Re:Super-Node and Regular Nodes?

[asavage]

This technology seems to be a bit limiting from the story, would someone be able to provide more detail?

If you remember Gutella at first, every node was equal, so every search had to go to the 3 or 4 you where connected to and then the 3 of 4 they where connected to, and people with old computers and slow connections really slowed searching down. Now they (and KaZaA) use super nodes or super peers that have fast computers with lots of ram and a fat pipe. If (say) 20 people connected to a supernode, and the supernode was connected so several other supernodes, search speeds are improved dramatically.