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bluesky - Re: Hi, and some comments

bluesky AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Global-Scale Distributed Storage Systems

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  • From: Ian Clarke <ian AT octayne.com>
  • To: Global-Scale Distributed Storage Systems <bluesky AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Hi, and some comments
  • Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 10:54:58 -0800

On Tue, Feb 27, 2001 at 03:53:53AM -0800, Wei Dai wrote:
> I think the main question here is whether eventually there is room for
> more than one global-scale distributed storage system. Suppose there is a
> system that provides all of the benefits that Freenet does, but also has
> controllable reliability (so that one can pay more to obtain greater
> reliability). Then it's hard to see how Freenet can compete with it unless
> Freenet has become so popular that no one wants to switch unless everyone
> switches.

I suspect that the two may be mutually exclusive, although don't ask me
to prove it ;) In Freenet, information's availability is in proportion
to its demand. This is probably the perfect situation from the
perspective of consumers of information, but not for producers of
information (I had this argument with Richard Stallman over a year ago).

If you take television as an analogy, some of the information is there
because it is popular (the content), and some is there because people
have paid to put it there (the advertisments). From the point of view
of someone watching TV - would you prefer a system with or without
advertisments?

> How does Freenet prevent an attacker from inserting so much garbage that
> most useful files are dropped

This would be difficult but is possible (in a Freenet which was being
widely used, any spamming would be a drop in the ocean), we will be
taking additional precautions which will make this still more difficult
(inserted data is actually inserted half-way up the datastore rather
than at the top).

> or people from using it to trade huge files
> without contributing resources back to the system?

The huge file *is* a resource, but its popularity (in proportion to its
size) will determine the degree to which it is replicated on Freenet, if
at all. You seem to be thinking in terms of providing a service to
producers of information, where as Freenet provides a service to
consumers of information. From this point of view, all information is a
resource (the value of which is determined by popularity).

> In a MojoNation-style economy anyone can also publish information
> regardless of their personal wealth. This is because storage and bandwidth
> are very cheap and getting cheaper. Consider the fact that there are a lot
> of unused disk space and bandwidth sitting on everyone's desks. If they
> all partcipate in the market it will be very inexpensive to publish
> anything except things like high resolution motion pictures.

Most people in the world today have 28.8k or 33.6k modems - and pay for
internet connectivity by the minute, that is hardly what I would
describe as a surplus of bandwidth.

Ian.

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