Slashdot Mirror
Making Freenet Find Stuff Faster
Sanity writes "Many probably saw the recent announcement of Freenet 0.5.2. This release represented a vast amount of work - primarily in reducing Freenet's CPU and memory requirements. However, streamlining Freenet's current functionality isn't all we've been working on. I just finished an article that describes the most fundamental improvement to Freenet's core algorithm since its original design over three years ago, it is called "Next Generation Routing" and has the potential to dramatically increase the speed with which Freenet retrieves information. It could even make Freenet faster than the World Wide Web in many circumstances, all without compromizing anonymity and while remaining immune to the /. effect."
Freenet is an awesome idea, and very rapidly becoming one that is neccesary to ensure your protection. Although it is a double edged sword (It can help both good, and bad people), I think it's one that is neccesary. And, if it becomes speedier than the web at large, it'd be just freaking awesome. Now, no one needs to fear censorship, nor do they need to fear the government shoving them into a database.
Now if only I could get it running on my Mac OS X box...
"immune to the /. effect."
:-)
If this isn't a challange I don't know what is
-traskjd
My blog [.net, rants, general IT]
Other than the fact that most infringers do not like to use Freenet because it is too clunky for them to get their quick hit of free music, it is no more of a threat than any of the popular P2P services.
Translation: "Oh Lord, I hope Freenet is inherently unable to have robust search functions, because if it ever develops these, we're hosed. But in the meantime, we can dismiss this software as being a big POS."
Now, less than two weeks after the interview, it seems the one aspect of Freenet that Oppenheim wanted to write off at is on the brink of being fixed.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Instructions for windows and linux and linux compatables.
Windows : Right click the rabbit icon in your system tray, then click upate to latest snapshot build.
Linux : run update.sh in the freenet directory.
Nero-burning ROM for Linux!
You know what'd be really impressive? Finding a way to make FreeNet slower. It'd be so slow you could make a Beowulf cluster of FreeNet nodes and use it as a time machine. Personally, I'd use it to go back to Ian Clarke's dorm room and convince him to get drunk and high rather than wasting his life making a P2P system that will be useful around the same time we have to start worrying about being censored by the United Federation of Planets. But that's just me.
What I find interesting about this algorithm is that it is applied individually by each node; there seems to be no need for nodes to share data over some complicated protocol as in many distributed systems. Yet (I think we can believe Clarke) this change improves response time through the system as a whole. It's a validation of the basic Freenet model of systems acting alone but providing a service greater than the sum of its parts.
has anyone ever tried peekabooty, esp. under wine? The reflections on open source development the developer(s) feature on their website sound kinda depressed..but then again, the honesty factor speaks for them. Are there any deep flaws in the idea? I personally like the simplicity of their design, but since I'm not a design guru, I may be utterly wrong.
...at least not keyword searching as you find in Google and Kazaa. When they refer to searching they mean given a key (a very large number), finding the corresponding data.
Immunity to ignorant masses of /. users it is not.
/. crowd of joining, and here is the etiquet/advice I have.
:)
/1/ /2/ /3/ and link to images from the future. If the image loads, you know there is a more recent revision. date based must be activated every time interval, or they die. Be very careful with these.
/. effect immunity, they mean linking to a site will only make it stronger. Everyone on /. joining freenet is just going to slow it down, because basically, you are creating a great suction on the net without any data to give back. Even worse, when you quit off of freenet, everyone will be looking for you from their cache and not finding you. This is going to cause the most problems, but surely not everyone on /. are going to quit on the same day. ;)
I was in the first
Things to do if you plan on playing with freenet:
1. Set it up properly.
1a Set your IP in the config file, read the site for details, but it's freenet.ini
1b Try to use DynDNS if you have a dynamic IP
2c Leave it up 24/7 for a few days before you judge speed. You need to let the blood circulate
2. Install a proper version of Java. I recommend the 1.4.2 beta. IBM may work better, I haven't tried.
3. Fix your browser.
3a Your browser will crash on some sites (even Mozilla not Opera) because of a GIF bug.. patch it.
3b Set your number of simultaneous connections up a lot. You request a file from your local store, then it downloads it. You need to request as many in parallel as possible.
Now, on to advice.
Get Frost! Frost is like the news groups of the freenet. It's a great place to read interesting ideas.
If you want to make a site, check out Fish tools, Fuqid and FIW.
Be aware that there are 3 different kinds of sites, and two modes of getting information
3 types include interval based, revision, and static. Static sites are one time shots. Revisions you create directories like
There are SSK and CHK linking methods, which I still don't know a whole lot about, but maybe someone will reply and explain them.
By
Get IIP, so you can realtime chat with people that run some sites on freenet. #freenet is dedicated to freenet chat and issues.
Have fun!
(Posting anonymously in respect of the freenet principals.)
Makes you wonder if Freenet gained popularity over the web whether all "official" transactions would be web-based, leaving Freenet to misc. web sites that are completely information/communication based. The reason I wonder is because if someone gets their login/password stolen from some random service on Freenet which they invested mucho time in, how will anyone else know the difference? That would really irk me.. (Yes, I know the web is vulnerable to this as well, but at least it requires a user have an IP address -- whether or not it's actually legit.)
This is incorrect. For networking related stuff, Java is efficient. It will use some more memory, and it will use (a bit more) CPU power but there are many reasons to go with java for such a project:
- easier language to pick up / understand (this is a collective effort)
- little to no chance of buffer overruns, making the node much safer against attacks)
- runs on Linux, Apple, Sun, Windows, FreeBSD without - any - porting
- java was more or less created with projects like these in mind, so most functionality will be readily available in the default libraries
Nowadays CPU and memory are commodities that can easily be come by. I see it taking about 32 MB right now, but that is out of a single 512 MB pool that can be upgraded to 1 GB for virtually free. My processor usage is max 25%, but note that the freenet guys set the priority to low themselves.
Java means a shift to better programming, with better runtime information and safer programs. This will take CPU and memory, but this is an offer you should consider very well.
This same discussion went on between assembler and C programmers. Look at it now. I think the progress of object oriented, garbage collecting, more secure platforms are as important as that paradigm shift.
Warper
the nice thing about the current ng routing scheme is that there's plenty of room for research on how to tune it even further.
/me wanders if embedding fortran in java makes sense ;))
Note: if you haven't read the article, this won't make much sense to you.
For one, the number of reference points doesn't have to be fixed; if/when memory and cpu power allows us, we could have variable number of reference points per node. This opens the door to other decisions, such as whether we encourage clustering reference points. If yes, we add new ref points closer to others. If not, we remove a ref point the density within some keyspace interval gets too big. Another option is to add a new ref point whenever the n previous estimates turn out to be more than x% correct, and remove one if otherwise.
Another direction to go into is curve fitting. If cpu power allows us, we could use various techniques of polynomial or Fourrier interpolation within the existing reference points to draw more accurate curve of time vs. keyspace.
Don't go silently into that peaceful night
It takes some time to build up information on how to get around. It gets faster, be patient
Uh, your really off your mark here. The Freenet web interface thingy comes with it's own mini webserver and the functionality to turn any non-transient node into a freenet distribution center. From the Freenet web interface, there's a link called Spread Freenet. (Link only works if you have Freenet installed and running.)
Even if the main Freenet site got taken down, things would still be just peachy...
While we're at it, what's this about the Bittorent mainpage going down? I know that a few popular tracker sites went down, but I've never heard of the main BitTorrent site going down. Click the link; it's up right now.
Moderators: How the hell did the parent get modded +2 Insightful?
freenet still isint there yet, but feel free to tell us when.
This is just the attitude that is delaying the adoption of many new technologies (IPv6, for one). "Early adopter, what's that? Just tell me when it's done!" How do you expect it to "get there" if no one uses it? Take a chance. You might be pleasantly surprised.
You're part of the problem! The reason Freenet sucks for a little while after each release is that there's a huge influx of empty datastores joining the network. The network bounces back pretty quickly, as data gets passed around and as routing tables hone themselves, the network gets a lot better.
Then a day or two later, you and 90% of the other slashdotters drop off, and leave holes in everyone's routing tables. All the contribution that your nodes were just starting to make, gets undone. All the copies of content that got replicated into your datastores vanish. All the routing optimizations that were just sorting themselves out get broken again.
Tourists hurt the network. If you're judging Freenet based on it's performance the day after a slashdotting, you're not getting a full or fair picture. Come back and stay a while! Let your node run for a week and I think you'll be impressed.
When they say Freenet is slashdot-resistant, they refer to content within the network. Any piece of data, be it a single file or a whole freesite, will simply propagate more as more people request it. The network itself definitely labors a bit as empty datastores dillute it. The best way to improve Freenet's performance is to encourage those tourists to stick around, so they and the network will benefit the most.
Lets see if we can use them all...
Freenet is now being 'fixed' like a leaky faucet is fixed.
The RIAA wants the digitial audio/video market 'fixed' like a crooked horse race is fixed.
With the new Freenet the RIAA is about to be 'fixed' like your dog at the vet's is fixed.
I think that about covers it.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.