Making Freenet Find Stuff Faster 283
Sanity writes "Many probably saw the recent announcement of Freenet 0.5.2. This release represented a vast amount of work - primarily in reducing Freenet's CPU and memory requirements. However, streamlining Freenet's current functionality isn't all we've been working on. I just finished an article that describes the most fundamental improvement to Freenet's core algorithm since its original design over three years ago, it is called "Next Generation Routing" and has the potential to dramatically increase the speed with which Freenet retrieves information. It could even make Freenet faster than the World Wide Web in many circumstances, all without compromizing anonymity and while remaining immune to the /. effect."
ad for freenet? (Score:1, Interesting)
freenet still isint there yet, but feel free to tell us when.
Good. (Score:5, Interesting)
Freenet is an awesome idea, and very rapidly becoming one that is neccesary to ensure your protection. Although it is a double edged sword (It can help both good, and bad people), I think it's one that is neccesary. And, if it becomes speedier than the web at large, it'd be just freaking awesome. Now, no one needs to fear censorship, nor do they need to fear the government shoving them into a database.
Now if only I could get it running on my Mac OS X box...
Re:Good. (Score:5, Interesting)
Will Oppenheim Eat His Words? (Score:5, Interesting)
Other than the fact that most infringers do not like to use Freenet because it is too clunky for them to get their quick hit of free music, it is no more of a threat than any of the popular P2P services.
Translation: "Oh Lord, I hope Freenet is inherently unable to have robust search functions, because if it ever develops these, we're hosed. But in the meantime, we can dismiss this software as being a big POS."
Now, less than two weeks after the interview, it seems the one aspect of Freenet that Oppenheim wanted to write off at is on the brink of being fixed.
Distributed algorithm benefits Freenet again (Score:5, Interesting)
peekabooty anyone? (Score:4, Interesting)
Hmm.. (Score:4, Interesting)
It seriously needs it.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Two minutes to load the WARNING page in front of the main 'search engine' of sorts that it has.
Its worse than being on dialup. I'm all for the anonymity, but I'm on broadband, and it CRAWLS.
Make Freenet Free! (Score:3, Interesting)
Publicibooty (Score:3, Interesting)
They thought it would be cool to design a censorproof network. They weren't interested in supporting what was already in development, namely Freenet, after all - where is the publicity in being part of someone else's project?
The only problem was that they dramatically underestimated the difficulty of pulling it off - the result? Peekabooty was, is, and probably always will be, vaporware. The design they do have is a primitive HTTP proxy network last time I looked, and it doesn't solve any of the difficult problems of circumventing censorship (just ask them how the poor little Chinese dissidents are supposed to find their HTTP proxies).
Amuzing, after draining the concept of a censor-proof network for all it was worth (without actually building one) - they then did their best [peek-a-booty.org] to drain publicity from their failure to build it!
Freenet answers those questions, and has done so since its original design in 1999.
plenty of room for future research/tuning (Score:4, Interesting)
Note: if you haven't read the article, this won't make much sense to you.
For one, the number of reference points doesn't have to be fixed; if/when memory and cpu power allows us, we could have variable number of reference points per node. This opens the door to other decisions, such as whether we encourage clustering reference points. If yes, we add new ref points closer to others. If not, we remove a ref point the density within some keyspace interval gets too big. Another option is to add a new ref point whenever the n previous estimates turn out to be more than x% correct, and remove one if otherwise.
Another direction to go into is curve fitting. If cpu power allows us, we could use various techniques of polynomial or Fourrier interpolation within the existing reference points to draw more accurate curve of time vs. keyspace.
"remaining immune to the /. effect."? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Java can't be efficient (OT) (Score:3, Interesting)
IMHO, the Java VM should be loaded at startup, and a single VM should be used to launch multiple applications. When used like that (together with an efficent GUI startup process) much of the gripe against Java applications should be gone. Obviously the firewalling between programs should be maintained. Alas, this is not currently so.
To come back to freenet: it doesn't incorporate a GUI in normal use (using the web interface is not the same as launching a Swing application) and for networking speed: the speed of the connection will be the bottle neck, not the Java application.
It must be said that the current implementation will scare away programmers that are looking towards efficency. For most programs you should n't though. Look at the architecture before trying to get something more efficient by changing languages.
ps. for an ample showcase of efficiency, try Eclipse from IBM. Check the features first before posting though.
I doubt that this will actually happen (Score:3, Interesting)
More likely, Congress will order the FBI to use Carnivore (or whatever it is called now) to track people downloading a particular file on Freenet, and to try and find out who they are. I don't remember how Freenet works, or how Carnivore works, but I'm sure with total control of the router infrastructure you could figure out who was downloading what, eventually..... although, every control message for freenet is encrypted, huh? Well, anyway they'd try.
Then, the RIAA will demand that congress give them the power to open up carnivore boxes and track down "pirates" without judicial oversight.
Our legislators have such a poor idea of how freenet works (worse even than mine,) that I don't think they *can* write a law against it. A law against software that enables two remote computers to connect to each other without both of them knowing who the other is?
Re:Transient Nodes and Permanent Nodes (Score:3, Interesting)
So let's just wait and see if all these new non-permanent permanent nodes will hurt the network or help it.
Re:ad for freenet? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd love to. You show me where I can download the features that they're announcing, and I'll try it. That's the point: This stuff doesn't exist in Freenet yet; they're talking about their wishlist. This is news?
Re:Good. (Score:3, Interesting)
Simple analytical reasoning will tell you that Freenet is not a good choice if you're looking for a relaxed low-profile cruise through an anarchical network. Either it works as advertised, raising the hackles of those who believe that networked anonymity offers an unreasonable risk (from RIAA to government, this network is almost certainly on the radar), or it doesn't work as well as you think it might, leaving you in the lurch if you're whistleblowing or 'file sharing' or far worse. This guy is raising a good point, and one that came to mind as I was browsing Freenet one night and decided to disconnect rather than potentially get involved in something out of proportion to my desire to see how people use their freedom of speech in such a medium.
Sorry if this tips your sacred cow, reader, but in a world where something like Freenet would be necessary users would be shot in the head no matter how cleverly the data stores themselves resist tampering.
Re:Freenet not a panacea (Score:2, Interesting)
If you request a key and my node hands you that file, there is no way for you to tell whether I had that file on my machine already and just sent it to you in response to your request, or whether my node went out and got that file from ANOTHER NODE in response to your request, and then passed it on to you, caching it on my node in case of further requests.
In other words, by trying to 'police' freenet in this fashion, you are thwarting your own goals, and making sure that your file is widely propagated across a large number of nodes, only a small fraction of whose IP addresses will be known to you (you only know the IP address of the last node that delivered the file to you) -- and those IP addresses are likely to be those of people who did not even have the file before you requested it!
Re:Freenet not a panacea (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Can it really be faster than WWW or not? (Score:4, Interesting)
Basicly, freenet latency is bad, freenet throughput is good. (and freenet reliability is different
Mod parent up (Score:1, Interesting)
Freenet may be the best that we have so far, and I have nothing against its success in fighting off the fascistic corporate state, but he's right, at least as far as the U.S. is concerned.
ISPs could be required to install routers which block anything which does not follow a prescribed protocol -- a whitelist, as it were.
Spyware software which allows access to limited protocols of the internet (e.g. HTTP, FTP) would be required, and would use government-approved revokable encryption keys which expire too often for there to be any practicality in cracking them, since the encryption would be done in the middle, at the ISP level, and not at the P2P ends.
People with economic power -- I'm sorry guys, that's not us -- would accept the government's explanation that this is needed to fight off cyber-terrorism. So there would not be enough dollar protests to fight such a draconian system even if we tried. The public has already been conditioned for martial law.
The government was hoping that the July 6 cyber-attacks occurred, so that it could justify moving closer to this reality. Thankfully they did not happen.
Violators could be fined or sued, and there would be no due process rights because they are matters for the civil, not criminal, courts. The Constitution is obsolete.
People could try to create other ways to access the internet outside of the U.S., such as freenet servers outside of the U.S., but in the U.S. it would be called an act of terrorism, ala Patriot Act II, which if caught could lead to arrest and indefinite detention without trial under Ashcroft's regime.
I realize Freenet is the best we have so far, and it will delay things, but if the fascists in the government, RIAA and MPAA have their way, it won't be free. Do not become complacent because of Freenet, and assume that everything is safe.
We are living in a police state. It's time to start coming up with alternative defenses in the event of internet martial law, such as pirate radio, Fidonet and BBSes, etc.
Support Freenet, but remember it is not a panacea.
Lets all subcribe to Freenet (Score:2, Interesting)
$10 a month to freenet and get all the music and movies you want,
Or pay the RIAA $100,000 dollars per song.
I think we dont have a choice but to make the logical business decision just like the RIAA made the logical business decision to sue 60 million people.
Here you go, Subscribe now FreenetSubscription
Re:Good. (Score:3, Interesting)
This routing has its problems. (Score:3, Interesting)
2. It does not fit really well in the freenet sources. In the current freenet implementation the network layer and routing layer are split. Unless you develop it yourself this will not be implemented in freenet (soon).
DNF: estimate if they are legimate by estimating their time. This does not work on a saturated network. And freenet is always (by design i think ) full.
There are some asumptions here that do not work. Also there will be things in freenet that will try to hide the location
Inherited Knowledge:
Make nodes learn faste by assuming some kind (vague!) of trust between nodes. read: create trust by an estabished node and new (unreliable?) node. This is against the freenet paradigma and creates all kinds of security problems. This kind of thing should not be implemented in freenet where the 1st priority is security.
The only positive thing this article is suggesting is to time the data and so optimize the flow of messsages according to the internet structure. In freenet this is an implementation problem.
There were more of these kind of suggestions on the freenet tech mailing list. I unsubscribed it (too much spam, too much interesting ideas from people who had no clue)
If you write such articles please investigate other p2p solution as well! (gnet/gnunet india network and many others.)
Well no wonder it sucks! (Score:5, Interesting)
You're part of the problem! The reason Freenet sucks for a little while after each release is that there's a huge influx of empty datastores joining the network. The network bounces back pretty quickly, as data gets passed around and as routing tables hone themselves, the network gets a lot better.
Then a day or two later, you and 90% of the other slashdotters drop off, and leave holes in everyone's routing tables. All the contribution that your nodes were just starting to make, gets undone. All the copies of content that got replicated into your datastores vanish. All the routing optimizations that were just sorting themselves out get broken again.
Tourists hurt the network. If you're judging Freenet based on it's performance the day after a slashdotting, you're not getting a full or fair picture. Come back and stay a while! Let your node run for a week and I think you'll be impressed.
When they say Freenet is slashdot-resistant, they refer to content within the network. Any piece of data, be it a single file or a whole freesite, will simply propagate more as more people request it. The network itself definitely labors a bit as empty datastores dillute it. The best way to improve Freenet's performance is to encourage those tourists to stick around, so they and the network will benefit the most.
Removing Porn from Freenet (Score:3, Interesting)
"If you make it, they will come" is all to important with Freenet.
Another point to make: If you view the porn and try to download it, you are also spreading this content to other nodes. If you don't want it on the network, don't view it or use it. Indeed, Freenet is very democratic in this sense, and you "vote" on each key each time you use it. These votes are actually used to determine if data is kept or discarded once the data store if filled, and old seldom used data is dumped routinely.