Completing BitTorrent Decentralization 236
Njaal writes "With BitTorrent going trackerless, searching for and distributing .torrent files is a natural next step. The Socialized.Net (TSN) is a pure P2P search infrastructure which facilitates P2P searching and distribution of .torrent files. It comes complete with an Azureus (and Firefox) search plugin. TSN is written in Python and is made available under the GPL. Note that this is part of my PhD thesis, and is as such meant as a technology demonstrator."
400%Growth in nodes (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:P2P is not (Score:3, Interesting)
Many sites and young projects
It may not seem like much cost to distribute a 50KB file but if you get popular it can add up , then you have alot of other overheads
Re:clearly, this is positive (Score:5, Interesting)
What is BitTorrent now? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:viva la bittorrent (Score:2, Interesting)
Azureus install (Score:2, Interesting)
Kahless2k
This will kill Bittorrent (Score:2, Interesting)
Meta data search? (Score:2, Interesting)
P2P could even replace things like classified ads or directories. Share a picture of your car with tags set appropriately and anybody can search for it.
Re:Google? (Score:4, Interesting)
Like this? [torrenttyphoon.com]
Re:I tried it, and it said... (Score:1, Interesting)
Free and opensource torrents: http://ikarios.com/bt/ [ikarios.com]
A Different Solution (Score:3, Interesting)
Port advertising instead of service advertising.
I haven't come across this idea elsewhere, so, please let me know if you actually do it ;)... I would if I had a server handy, it's an easy project.
One centralised server can be used as a central tracker for P2P, or anything else, with no legal implications. The idea is simple. Your server doesn't advertise services, it advertises open ports.
Let's say my awesome new p2p program uses port 23145. On starting up, it sends a packet to central server saying "my port 23145 is open". When someone else asks the server for someone with port 23145 open, there's a chance they get my IP address in return. When I have enough connections, I send a packet asking that I be delisted.
Obviously there need to be controls against spoofing, etc, but the application is so simple that these are pretty easy to do.
Because the central server stores nothing more than IP/port pairs (plus timing and security stuff), there is complete deniability. You have no way to tell which program people are running, either on the server or the client. And you never see any application data whatsoever. It's just as useful for legitimate apps as for legally difficult stuff.
Problem solved. Any program can find other instances of the same program without nasty legal questions being raised. Admittedly they'll have to check the identity of the other program on connection, but they should be doing that anyway...
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course this is evolution! (Score:3, Interesting)
Nonsense. This is quite obviously a form of evolution.
First off, we get IRC. It wasn't well known by the public and searching was quite difficult for the masses.
Next, we get Napster. It was a good server, with huge increases in fitness due to searching, but it was too centralized (even more so than IRC). The main servers got killed with lawsuits and it died.
Next we got Morpheus, which started because of the success of Napster (and to fill the niche left by Napster's extinction), which was more decentralized and used Kazaa's network. And included file searches for non-MP3 files. Kazaa killed it off because they were greedy, and owned the core part of the network.
Kazaa was far enough away from the courts that they lived longer. However a series of lawsuits against users and the general peer to peer operation made it less fit.
Bittorrent came out with the primary advantage of the uploading while download protocol set. Which also added a more decentralized aspect to the peer-to-peer paradigm. It constituted a huge leap in fitness.
Bittorrent however is still based on trackers and torrent files. It needs a centralized location to start. These centralized locations are easy prey for predators such as MPAA and RIAA.
This addition, frees that restriction. Improving the overall fitness of the product by increasing it's decentralization which reduces predation from anti-piracy services.
Now, if, for example, back in 1998 decentralized Bittorrent networks showed up out of the blue. This would be a sign of intelligent design. No trial or error and it appeared fully formed. But, still not irreducibly complex. Each step towards decentralization adds fitness to the product. A slight increase (of decentralization) still yields an increase in fitness, which is all that is required for evolution.
Overall, it is true that the program was designed and implemented by intelligent people. But, this is just the nature of programs. If it is a good idea it should have more fitness and do well, if it is a poor idea it gets sent off to Limewire limbo. This is the product of evolution.