Subject: [P2PSIP] Is it really P2P?

From: "Anton Tveretin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2013 21:43:46 +0600

Hello All,
As for me, truly peer-to-peer must be based on IP multicast or something 
like. So there will not be any single point of failure, no one could stop 
 the network.
Existing solutions, based on bootstrap nodes, are really not P2P: think of 
 the bootstrap node as of 'server'. I've seen severeal networks shut down.
Any more ideas?
Regards, Anton Tveretin.

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From: Dean Willis <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2013 09:46:09 -0600

> the bootstrap node as of 'server'. I've seen severeal networks shut down.

The problem is that carriers, lacking a business model that makes sense for
them, have turned off (or crippled) IP multicast on many networks, so the
typical "multicast domain" is no larger than the typical "broadcast
domain".  So, things like mDNS work well, for very small definitions of
"work".

It's certainly possible to replace the RELOAD bootstrap node with an mDNS
or similar discovery process, and I'm expecting to do this in sort of as
"phase 2" for RELOAD. One can find alternative ways to do configuration and
used self-signed certs, thereby eliminating most of the need for
centralized startup.

The problem is the chicken-and-egg -- until there enough RELOAD nodes out
there that there might be one to discover, we can't get the protocol off
the ground without some fixed resources. But I believe many of us have in
mind eventually using RELOAD for the sorts of self-organizing (or
self-repairing) networks needed by emergency responders,  military
organizations, packs of wandering motorcycle gangs, and so on.