[p2p-hackers] References for using hashes as unique identifiers?

[Gregory P. Smith]

Your example is a good one.  Talking to a friend at archive.org (the
repository of the entire web over time): they use md5 hashes to store
and address most things on their farm of >800 cheap terabyte servers.

On Tue, Feb 03, 2004 at 04:12:33PM +0200, Benja Fallenstein wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> does anybody know references for using cryptographic hashes as unique
> identifiers for files in very large repositories (think all of the Web)?
> The references I've found (e.g. Handbook of Applied Cryptography) don't
> talk explicitly about that, but only about applications in message
> authentication, and attacks related to that; of course that's related,
> but it would be nice to know whether there are references from
> cryptology talking explicitly about hashes as unique identifiers in very
> large collections of messages.
> 
> Thanks,
> - - Benja