Subject: Peer-to-peer

From: "Thor Harald Johansen" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 19:42:23 +0200

Is there an Internet standard for the kind of peer-to-peer communication
FreeNet (www.freenetproject.org) is capable of? I think there should be. The
Web, especially the DNS system, is too much in the hands of commercial
interests. I think everyone with access to the Internet should have the
right to own at least one domain name. Yes, I know the good ones would be
taken more or less immediately, but aren't they already? :)

I'm mostly interested in replies to my peer-to-peer question.
--
Thor

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 20:00:55 -0400

> FreeNet (www.freenetproject.org) is capable of? I think there should be. The

Well... there's RFC791, which specifies IP, 792 specifying ICMP, 793
specifying TCP, and 768 that specifies UDP.   Beyond that, you *really*
need to think about what you're trying to DO - NFS for file sharing will
have very different constraints and design paramaters than H.263 video
conferencing.

> taken more or less immediately, but aren't they already? :)

Everybody already has the right to own a domain name.  The problem is
paying for sufficient infrastructure to actually support it.  For starters,
you need to have 2 DNS servers willing to answer queries abut the name - and
you need at least one computer that the domain name actually points to.

Then of course, you end up with the white pages/yellow pages problem - the
.com tree is already flooded, you won't fit 380 million Americans in there
and expect to *FIND* anybody.

And that's the *real* issue, isn't it?  I mean - I end up using lots
of domain names in the course of my work, but for the rest of the world,
I'm just an e-mail address, or a Yahoo or ICQ or AIM handle.  None of that
inherently has a domain name that belongs to *ME* attached to it (and if
you want to get anal-retentive, I don't *HAVE* a domain name I own - all
the ones I use are maintained by my employer).

And although I've been on the net since the early 80's, the lack of owning
a domain name has never seemed to be a major inconvenience when dealing
with the outside world...
-- 
				Valdis Kletnieks
				Operating Systems Analyst
				Virginia Tech

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From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2001 09:42:50 -0700

>>FreeNet (www.freenetproject.org) is capable of? I think there should be. The

Yes - it's already implemented at the network layer, and it's called the 
Internet. Most peer systems recapitulate that architecture, more or 
(mostly) less, at the application layer, in addition to providing a 
search capability. It is the search capability that is probably more 
interesting, in the long run, IMO.

>>taken more or less immediately, but aren't they already? :)

The DNS is an 'easily remembered' handle to an IP address. The DNS is 
not a search engine. Given those two principles (granted, they seem not 
to be as given as they should be), the rest isn't very hard at all. Pick 
  two or three short words or a phrase and concatenate it. Odds are very 
good it's available. The problem is it's not "guessable", and that's the 
disconnect. (again, IMO).

Joe