Re: strengths and weaknesses of Gnutella
Michael Green <[email protected]> Wed, 07 Apr 2010 00:11:51 +0100
| Newsgroups | gmane.network.gnutella.devel |
|---|---|
| Organization | Emixode |
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
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Hiya Arne,
Wanted to reply earlier, but got caught up with the Digital Economy Bill
mess in the UK; Hopefully it'll be voted out tomorrow! Anyway ...
While overall I agree with the strengths/weaknesses you've mentioned,
the one regarding community building and specialized searches go
hand-in-hand. Because you're only accessing a subset of available data
in Gnutella at any given time, it makes both community building and
wide-reaching specialized searches difficult (and yes, you can consider
that to be integral). But this can be considered both a weakness and
strength, of which you've already mentioned its weaknesses. The strength
is that this will keep Gnutella resillient to data poisoning (including
DHT) -- simplified, look at it as a "majority vote": a poisoned subset
will gradually be cleaned by the majority of the (overlapping) clean
subsets.
Not wanting to affect this resilliance, one could expand the subset at
the cost of reducing the kind of data accessible, though this would also
make the protocol very specific in its use which probably goes against
the wishes of the majority of its users. Nevertheless, such specific use
could still benefit Gnutella; think of it as an P2P HTTP protocol in
that sense - no central web server to serve (x)HTML (something Sir
Berners-Lee envisions). In other words, one of the questions that is
being raised here is: What purpose will Gnutella have in the future?
As for the other two weaknesses, which is the difficulty to implement a
new servent and lack of integration (whether desktop or mobile), I can
only attribute that to a lack of, or fragmentation of the documentation.
Several attempts have been made to unify and complete the documentations
but never came to fruition. LimeWire has done a great deal towards that
end, but by including vendor specific features also caused quite some
confusion.
My only consideration regarding the documentation at this point is,
should the documentation efforts be restarted first or should we first
discuss potential new / changed features? And by the latter, I'm not
just talking about a clear definition of DHT / Mojito, but also about
the years of academic research into Gnutella that has produced heaps of
interesting findings.
That's my food for thought, opinions may vary ;-)
-- Mike
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<p>Hiya Arne,<br>
<br>
Wanted to reply earlier, but got caught up with the Digital Economy Bill <br>
mess in the UK; Hopefully it'll be voted out tomorrow! Anyway ...<br>
<br>
While overall I agree with the strengths/weaknesse<wbr>s you've mentioned, <br>
the one regarding community building and specialized searches go <br>
hand-in-hand. Because you're only accessing a subset of available data <br>
in Gnutella at any given time, it makes both community building and <br>
wide-reaching specialized searches difficult (and yes, you can consider <br>
that to be integral). But this can be considered both a weakness and <br>
strength, of which you've already mentioned its weaknesses. The strength <br>
is that this will keep Gnutella resillient to data poisoning (including <br>
DHT) -- simplified, look at it as a "majority vote": a poisoned subset <br>
will gradually be cleaned by the majority of the (overlapping) clean <br>
subsets.<br>
<br>
Not wanting to affect this resilliance, one could expand the subset at <br>
the cost of reducing the kind of data accessible, though this would also <br>
make the protocol very specific in its use which probably goes against <br>
the wishes of the majority of its users. Nevertheless, such specific use <br>
could still benefit Gnutella; think of it as an P2P HTTP protocol in <br>
that sense - no central web server to serve (x)HTML (something Sir <br>
Berners-Lee envisions). In other words, one of the questions that is <br>
being raised here is: What purpose will Gnutella have in the future?<br>
<br>
As for the other two weaknesses, which is the difficulty to implement a <br>
new servent and lack of integration (whether desktop or mobile), I can <br>
only attribute that to a lack of, or fragmentation of the documentation. <br>
Several attempts have been made to unify and complete the documentations <br>
but never came to fruition. LimeWire has done a great deal towards that <br>
end, but by including vendor specific features also caused quite some <br>
confusion.<br>
<br>
My only consideration regarding the documentation at this point is, <br>
should the documentation efforts be restarted first or should we first <br>
discuss potential new / changed features? And by the latter, I'm not <br>
just talking about a clear definition of DHT / Mojito, but also about <br>
the years of academic research into Gnutella that has produced heaps of <br>
interesting findings.<br>
<br>
That's my food for thought, opinions may vary ;-)<br>
<br>
-- Mike<br>
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