[p2p-hackers] part 2: proxying and introduction: the two fundamental operations of emergent networks

[Tony Kimball]

Quoth Zooko on Sunday, 16 September:

: Right now I'm worrying about Original Introduction -- how do you get new nodes
: added to the network for the first time, if your centralized node list, CGI
: script, or Meta Tracker, is unavailable?

Peer-wise horizontal diversification is just one form of
decentralization.  Another is vertical decentralization, in which 
a variety of modalities are used to obtain operational information,
with rolling failover between them.  It is more time-consuming
to implement a multimodal introduction mechanism, but it can 
make your system quite robust.  Pick a few:

- IM services
  Messenger
  Yahoo
  AOL
  etc.

- Mailboxes
  Hotmail
  Yahoo
  et.c

- NNTP servers/groups
  
- IRC networks/channels
  
- GNUTELLA-based discovery
  (requires a significant number of agents listening on the gnet, due
  to limited horizon) 

- Freenet-based discovery
  Publish connection-point lists

- DNS-based discovery
  dyndns.org
  eyep.net
  etc.

- Supernodes

- FastTrack-based discovery

- Opennap/napigator-based discovery

Some are very quick to get working because there is plenty of solid,
re-usable code available.  

Myself, I'd like to see the peer-system community rally to establish a
reliable, persistent open DNS space for discovery services.  Perhaps
it's a field-of-dreams situation:  If you build it, they will come.
But perhaps not: So much NIH.