Direct Connect no longer centralized
Posted: 23 Feb 2010, 17:11
Times are changing and since BMs inital implementation of DHT ive seen some new stuff coming up like Dtella and Roothub although Roothub isnt ADC is still a decentralized hub.
So what is decentralization
The concept of decentralization is to remove the central structure of a network such that each peer can communicate as an equal to any other peer. When a peer (a) connects to a decentralized network it connects to another peer (b) to announce that it is live, b will then in turn announce to all peers it is connected to (c, d, e, f etc.) that a is alive, c, d, e, f etc repeating the pattern. Once a has announced that it is alive it can send a search request on to b, which in turn passes it on to c, d, e, f etc. If for example c has a copy of the file requested by a it transmits a reply to b which passes it back to a which can then open a direct connection to d and download the file.
Now this has both good and bad aspects lets break em down
Advantages of a decentralized architecture
They are more rugged, because a single point of failure is eliminated. They are also harder to shut down.
Disadvantages of a decentralized architecture
Searching a decentralized network is slower. You are not guaranteed to find a file even if it is on the network because it may be too far away for a search request to reach the peer which has it before the TTL expires.
I know many old timers on hubs etc wants Direct Connect remain as it is but times are changing networks have to adapt and restructure in order to survive now imagine a proxy network like the onion routing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_routing
all anonymous downloading via proxy addresses thats one way to adapt i know that there are bittorent trackers set up in this manor
http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-hydr ... or-090725/
it isn't impossible to set a DHT nexus point behind this and make client use this just a matter of figuring out how
http://www.torproject.org/hidden-services.html.en
so i hope i given some ideas of how to make decentralization anonymous to the developers of these kind of applications.
So what is decentralization
The concept of decentralization is to remove the central structure of a network such that each peer can communicate as an equal to any other peer. When a peer (a) connects to a decentralized network it connects to another peer (b) to announce that it is live, b will then in turn announce to all peers it is connected to (c, d, e, f etc.) that a is alive, c, d, e, f etc repeating the pattern. Once a has announced that it is alive it can send a search request on to b, which in turn passes it on to c, d, e, f etc. If for example c has a copy of the file requested by a it transmits a reply to b which passes it back to a which can then open a direct connection to d and download the file.
Now this has both good and bad aspects lets break em down
Advantages of a decentralized architecture
They are more rugged, because a single point of failure is eliminated. They are also harder to shut down.
Disadvantages of a decentralized architecture
Searching a decentralized network is slower. You are not guaranteed to find a file even if it is on the network because it may be too far away for a search request to reach the peer which has it before the TTL expires.
I know many old timers on hubs etc wants Direct Connect remain as it is but times are changing networks have to adapt and restructure in order to survive now imagine a proxy network like the onion routing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_routing
all anonymous downloading via proxy addresses thats one way to adapt i know that there are bittorent trackers set up in this manor
http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-hydr ... or-090725/
it isn't impossible to set a DHT nexus point behind this and make client use this just a matter of figuring out how
http://www.torproject.org/hidden-services.html.en
so i hope i given some ideas of how to make decentralization anonymous to the developers of these kind of applications.