Re: Tit for tat is difficult was Re: Distributed file system using routing inspired by Freenet

Matthew Toseland wrote:
 > This is interesting. We will eventually need some form of tit for tat,
 > won't we? Not necessarily in inserts, IIRC we talked about it as a way
 > to prevent an attacker flooding opennet with spam requests/inserts?
 > It's something we've talked about for a long time anyway...

Yup, I used to think it would work (at least for requests, inserts are 
more complicated) but I'm not so sure any more.

Imagine a node modified so that when it receives a request, it returns 
the data if it's in the cache or the store; otherwise it returns RNF 
with the remaining hops - it never forwards requests. This node will 
return fewer hits than a normal node, but it might return more hits *per 
byte of bandwidth used*. In that case, even if there's a TFT-like 
incentive mechanism, it might make sense for selfish users to modify 
their nodes. But if everyone does that, the network collapses.

Cheers,
Michael