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Decentralize BitTorrent with Kenosis
UnderScan writes "Eric Ries, writer/programmer/CTO, authored an article 'Kenosis and the World Free Web' at Freshmeat [Owned by Slashdot's Parent OSTG]. Kenosis is described as a 'fully-distributed peer-to-peer RPC system built on top of XMLRPC.' He has combined his Kenosis with BitTorrent & removed the need for a centralized tracker. He states: 'To demonstrate Kenosis's suitability for these new applications, we have used it to improve upon another peer-to-peer filesharing application that Just Works: BitTorrent. BitTorrent does one thing incredibly well. Using a centralized "tracker," BitTorrent manages efficient distribution of data that is in high demand. We have extended BitTorrent, using Kenosis, to eliminate this dependence on a centralized tracker.'
See also the Kenosis README for details on using Kenosis-enabled BitTorrent."
Neat, an open source alternative to Exeem which sadly turned out to be a spyware-ridden disappointment according to an earlier slashdot post.
Then this falls a bit short of the "killer p2p app" moniker that it *almost* deserves.
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori
From the feature list...
Kenosis works in almost any networking environnment, including restrictive corporate firewalls, because it uses XMLRPC for its network communications. It can also work with an HTTP proxy.
This alone makes a worthwhile project, for those stuck behind firewalls/proxies.
From TFA:
Kenosis is built in 100% pure Python
[snip]
He is author of several Free Software projects, most recently the peer-to-peer RPC system Kenosis, and co-author of several books, including The Black Art of Java Game Programming and Mastering Java.
It's fun to see how book-writing hackers act. Sell Java books to the Unwashed Masses, develop own projects in Python. BTW, interestingly enough, one could almost guess from reading the first few paragraphs that the implementation is going to be in Python.
Now we are just waiting for a platform-dependent implementation in C++ and MFC that is supposed to be faster because it's "native code", which all the clueless kids with 8mbit internet connections are going to download...
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
This is an important step, but it still does not hide the user's IPs from the *AA.
From the Article:
It does not address problems of anonymity, privacy, or distributed data retention, although we hope to address these issues in future versions.
If you read the article carefully (or not so carefully), you'll note that this product does NOT include a fully distributed / decentralized tracker... an web server tracker is still necessary for the initial torrent retrieval. If that tracker becomes overloaded / unavailable this system will have real value, but there's still an originating central tracker for the MPAA to go after.
However, it's only a very short matter of time. The author explains that such a thing could be easily created with this framework. Clearly he could have done it if he wanted, so I'm guessing this is a purposeful strategy on his part to avoid any potential direct or indirect personal liability or legal issues down the road...
-R
Even though the grunt work of uploading/downloading the content is offloaded to the peers, a sufficiently popular file can cause so many join/finish/etc messages that the tracker can't respond to tell them who is in the swarm
Lets simplify this. You are a program that doesn't know anything about the world, because you are a de-centralized program. You are started by your master ("user," in human speak). What do you then do? Who do you connect to? Surely if you had an address hardcoded somewhere you would no longer qualify as being decentralized. Do you start walking the IP space, trying to connect to 1.1.1.1, 1.1.1.2, and so on? Oh, so the IPs you have coded in your config are "only hints," huh? Okay, then you should be able to cope with all those "hints" having gone bad. When those hints are all bad, what do you do, Mr. D. Centralized Program?
Decentralized, my ass.
Must-not-watch TV!
There is a ton of good legal content that will be created once the bandwidth issue is solved. It's sad that the default comment is "well this sucks because the **AA will still be able to track me down when I use it to break the law." Most of use see the cultural usefullness of these things but the handfull of anarchists among us are hurting the movement.
The fact that this can get through firewalls and that it won't fail under heavy load (as happens with bittorrent trackers) are the important things.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
A brief look inside test.py suggested you needed to open ports for it.
At that point I removed it.
This may be off topic...
I was wondering what the slashdot community thinks of the estimates that BT uses 1/3rd of available internet traffic.
Considering that it is a bit more private and "exclusive" than things like Kazaa and Edonkey does that number seem possible. You know. It takes the install of the basic BT binary as well as the GUI client of your desire. Then you need to find a decent BT website/ community.
If this figure IS true, wouldn't making BT even more viable eventually choke the internet?
Thoughts?
It would be ironic that something that was designed to "manage" bandwidth may end up hogging all that is available.
There is a ton of good legal content that will be created once the bandwidth issue is solved.
Oh really? Watch the big copyright owners sue the independent producers of so-called "good legal content", alleging that the so-called "good legal content" is in fact subconsciously copied from an existing copyrighted work. It could happen, especially with music.
Basically a bunch of speculation, that COULD happen. I COULD get hit by a bus ... Call us when it ACTUALLY happens.*
Had you taken the time to click the link, you'd see a bunch of cases leading up to one where it has happened. In Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music , George Harrison got sued and lost for inadvertently copying a song on his solo debut album.
You know... I don't recall it having a footprint that big. I'm without a windows box right now, but on by iBook, the BT client with a transfer running is using 8 megs. Sounds like the problem is in the specific widget library used for the windows version (which happens to be written in C++). Of course, considering the possiblity that something is wrong with a specific library or program is the rational thing to do. Do you think anyone designs an interpreter (especially one that implements garbage collection!) that is just going to allocate 23 megs of memory and do nothing with it?
Another thing to consider is this: given the choice between getting something done and having it be slightly inefficient and having a great unimplemented specification, I'll take the program over the wishware. If it is more likely to get done with python, then that might be the right choice.
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Crudely Drawn Games