Re: Darknet, uptime, and true passive requests

Matthew Toseland wrote:
> Most Freenet users are likely 
> to be non-geeks who won't run their computers 24x7 for various good reasons:

You might well be right, but in that case we need to ask some difficult
questions:

* Is it even possible to build a scalable, robust, distributed cache
where most of the nodes are offline most of the time and some of them
only connect to their friends?

* If it is possible, do we have a clear idea of how to build it, or are
we just piling systems on top of each other?

* What kind of applications can such a network support? What kind of
applications should it not even try to support?

> I'm not convinced. Freenet is not defined by its real-time behaviour, so much 
> as by its goals (censorship resistant datastore), and its need to build a 
> global f2f darknet to support those goals.

I think you've hit the nail on the head - Freenet has always been
defined by the broad goal of censorship resistance rather than by
concrete use cases, and as a result the means of achieving that goal
keep changing.

For example, should Freenet support real-time communication? Long-term
storage? Small, isolated darknets connected to the main network by camel
caravan? A large darknet in China and a large darknet in the West joined
by a handful of cross-border links?

> And longer term it'd be great if we could have e.g. audio 
> streams.

And a pony. ;-)

Cheers,
Michael