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Advances in Decentralized Peer Networks

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the more-systems-slip-through-your-fingers dept.

PureFiction writes "Peer networks are gaining some attention these days given advances in much more decentralized search architectures and swarming distribution networks. Research has indicated that these decentralized networks are resistant to legal and technological attacks. The continued proliferation of broadband and wireless networking will ensure pervasive deployment of distributed peer networking infrastructure that will drive significant innovations in personal and community digital communications services."

11 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. Damn Peer To Peer networks by nweaver · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As a security person, I hate these peer to peer applications: there are so many worm strategies which can exploit these, creating fast and stealthy attacks.

    As such, if I was in charge of corporate security administration, I'd ban them completely. At the universities, I'd packet-shape-them into a much lower priority.

    Unfortunatly, they are growing considerably more stealthy as a result of these legal attacks and the effects of packet-shapers. This may be a good thing for those who want their 1337 WAR3Z, D00D!!, but is rather unfortunate for those who want to create secure systems.

    --
    Test your net with Netalyzr
  2. Show me a P2P network being used legitimately! by t0qer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm not trying to troll here. Since napster all i've ever seen P2P used for is piracy of music, applications, pretty much whatever you wanted.

    I am that pot calling the kettle black. I am your average joe user. I have kazaa and routinely use it for downloading music. Yes I am a criminal. As are %99.9999 of all other P2P users.

    I understand the benifits of P2P, each client acting as a server and bonding the collective bandwidth of all the clients together. Yes I know it can be used for free speech, and I know for legitimate file distribution it can't be beat. That's just it though, it's never going to be legitimate without some type of DRM.

    I downloaded doom3 alpha (Sorry Carmack, it kicks ass though :) I saw no less than 100 users sharing the file. Nobody is supposed to have it but I do. Thanks to the decentralized nature of P2P there's no accountability. Websites that were hosting the file got a nasty attorney letter though.

    Here is my slashdottish geek comment. P2P creators need to start focusing on making their clients good for legitimate uses. For example, I think it would kick ass if the distro's started using P2P for their distro's, or a P2P based web server/browser. Anything to turn it from a black to a white sheep.

    *Note to mods
    Sorry I don't mean to be Mr. Obvious here, but I just feel any future P2P doesn't stand a chance if it doesn't have a legitimate foundation to stand on. The RIAA & MPAA has already proven what a great team of legal sharks they have and can overcome any technological advancements made in P2P

    my 2 cents

    1. Re:Show me a P2P network being used legitimately! by PureFiction · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If you had clicked through a few of the links you would have come across BitTorrent which is currently running a widescale distribution of the latest RedHat release ISO images using a decentralized swarming distribution network.

      For a limited picture of what future decentralized peer networks can accomplish you need only use your imagination.

      This is still relatively new technology with a lot of room for growth and extensible uses.

    2. Re:Show me a P2P network being used legitimately! by javatips · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Answer: Instant Messenging!

      Most people think of Gnutella, Kazaa and their similiar P2P application as the ONLY kind of P2P applications.

      There are many other kind of P2P applications in existence, Instant Messenging is one of them. Most use of instant messenging are legitimate.

    3. Re:Show me a P2P network being used legitimately! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
      if the distro's started using P2P for their distro's, or a P2P based web server/browser
      You might be interested in Freenet then. It's peer-to-peer, anonymous, and is quite functional.

      There are "freesites", which are websites within Freenet that anyone can publish, allowing your "P2P web". There are anonymous messaging and file-sharing systems as well. Additionally, I believe there was once work for apt-get over Freenet, but I don't know the status of that...
    4. Re:Show me a P2P network being used legitimately! by LX.onesizebigger · · Score: 3, Interesting

      IIRC, they didn't lose, they settled out of court knowing they would have lost. Now, I don't know what the case is normally around the world, but how the hell can you set up a legal system so messed up that it allows companies to settle their way out of an antitrust case?! WTF? If you price fix, if you form cartels, if you are using your dominant position in the market to monopolize the market, you go down, you pay damages, you get a big, legal no-no shoved in your face. You don't pay a little money and walk away any more than you settle out of a murder case or a bank robbery.

      --
      I for one welcome our new SCOviet Russian overlords to whom all our base are belong.
  3. Re:Well... by insanecarbonbasedlif · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Given enough resources, large companies can "pollute" these networks with "garbage" (i.e. corrupted songs etc.) that top people's search lists so that it becomes an intensely frustrating thing to find a full, complete, and good quality file.

    Then again, I have that problem anyways. Blimey!

     But if you are searching for legal/obscure files, it doesn't matter, because they won't be targeted by the companies.
    On a side note, can't these large companies be held responsible for all the bandwidth that they cause to be wasted? Or do we run into the same problem we have prosecuting spammers for bandwidth waste?

    --
    Just because I doubt myself does not mean I find your position compelling.
  4. Piracy defined... by bziman · · Score: 5, Interesting
    You don't seem to understand the meaning "piracy". There's nothing illegal about downloading stuff off the Internet. Philosophers may argue what's ethical, but that's irrelevent to legality.

    Piracy would be buying a CD, making copies of it, and selling those copies to people for a profit. In this case, you entered into an agreement with the copyright holder of the CD, and are violating applicable laws.

    When you download something off the Internet, you are under no obligation to be aware of its source, or the license agreements associated with it.

    Even posting copyrighted material on the Internet is not illegal if you have not been explicitely notified that you are in violation of the copyright agreement. The notice on your CD case counts, I believe, if you own the CD.

    So if you download something off the 'Net, you're well within the bounds of legality, and you can retransmit that until the copyright holder asks you to stop.

    American laws are so strange...

    1. Re:Piracy defined... by evilviper · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If you are aware that such works may be copyrighted, you can be held responsible for downloading it.

      And any piece of copyrighted work can not be redistributed without explicit permission from the author in most cases.

      Then again... pleading ignorance may still make a good defense.

      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
  5. That is sort of correct, but not quite... by Jim+McCoy · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Just to inject a bit of reality into your pointer to the mnet work, the public prototype of the MojoNation client was always available as LGPL code (pending a patent application on certain bits of the system which may change the license to something similar to RSAREF eventually; Zooko and I are looking for a legit 503c or similar vehicle that is willing to hold on to a license for non-commercial and non-DMCA-infringing use of the mnet system so that we can avoid this if possible...any takers out there?) Prior to the hibernation of the company we had been working on a commercial p2p backup system based upon the mojonation architecture called HiveCache, which is now getting prepped for a beta release. Another fork out of the mojonation work was BitTorrent, which started out as an idea Bram had while we were brainstorming new ideas for mojonation at one point (a cool idea which we did not pursue because it really only works for high-demand, massively replicated content).


    Unfortunately, the legal work we did early on when designing the system only prevented people from suing us (the code creators) and it did so by pushing liability off on to the users. That was the closest that one could really get to safety given the structure of the DMCA. Contrary to the widely held fantasy among decentralized p2p systems, "willful blindness" is not a valid defense against DMCA attacks -- something that I think the upcoming Kazaa et al. trial is eventually going to reveal after all of the appeals and other legal wrangling is worked out.


    BTW, the only app that mnet provides is a publish-retrieve shared data system identical to the old mojonation (sans distributed resource management), file sharing is not "one of" the apps for the API, it is the only app.

  6. Taking the Karma hit to address this. By Velmont by teamhasnoi · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Please no 15 link posts! (Score:0, Offtopic) by Vellmont
    This submission has no less than 15 links in it! I'm still not sure where the real content is. Worse, what appears to be the main link points to another few line discussion that references yet another article.

    Posters, and especially editors, Please don't post/allow submissions that are filled with nothing but links, and links to links. You may think you're providing more information, but most of those links are just noise. This seems to be an emerging trend on slashdot, and I think it's a very bad one.

    Taking a slight tangent for just a moment, sadly, the biggest problem with slashdot is there's never any real discussion (mostly that would involve the editors) about slashdot itself. There's constantly re-posts of material, and poor quality submissions. This needs to be fixed somehow, but can't happen unless the slashdot editors start talking about this problems and not just remain silent.

    AC REPLY ""sadly, the biggest problem with slashdot is there's never any real discussion (mostly that would involve the editors) about slashdot itself.""

    the problem lies not just with the editors but with everyone on slashdot (especially whoever happens to be moderating). anytime people (like you) actually comment about slashdot (even when its not a troll and is a cogent point, like yours is), it is moderated down, offtopic, or just ignored (as your post was).

    it's the built-in self-censorship that's the problem. not only does it limit the voices heard loudest on slashdot, but it prevents fixing of the very socially dysfunctional way slashdot works a lot of the time.