[p2p-hackers] Ideas for an opensource Skype lookalike

[Brad Neuberg]

Because they claim to have a scalable, secure, decentralized lookup 
mechanism that is easy to use.

At 04:10 PM 3/13/2004, you wrote:

>The username and full name appear to be searchable.  The number of online 
>users appears to be in the 100,000 to 200,000 range.  There is an advanced 
>search that allows all profile information to be searchable.
>
>I wouldn't be surprised if the main index is roughly divided up on keyword 
>prefix ranges amongst the long uptime addressable hosts.  Then again, I 
>wouldn't be surprised if it is a more formal DHT.  Actually, their ability 
>to do full substring searches argues against both of these 
>approaches.  They appear to be doing a broadcast search within a fully 
>distributed index.  The broadcast search ends when a set number of matches 
>are reached.
>
>Why does this sound ground breaking?
>
>Thanks
>-greg
>
>---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
>From: Brad Neuberg <bradneuberg at yahoo.com>
>Reply-To: "Peer-to-peer development." <p2p-hackers at zgp.org>
>Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2004 15:03:18 -0800 (PST)
>
> >The Skype page claims to have implemented something
> >called a "Global Index".  From their web page:
> >
> >"Global decentralized user directory:
> >
> >Most instant message or communication software
> >requires some form of centralized directory for the
> >purposes of establishing a connection between end
> >users in order to associate a static username and
> >identity with an IP number that is likely to change.
> >This change can occur when a user relocates or
> >reconnects to a network with a dynamic IP address.
> >Most Internet-based communication tools track users
> >with a central directory which logs each username and
> >IP number and keeps track of whether users are online
> >or not. Central directories are extremely costly when
> >the user base scales into the millions. By
> >decentralizing this resource-hungry infrastructure,
> >Skype is able to focus all of our resources on
> >developing cutting-edge functionality.
> >
> >P2P network technologies such as FastTrack (used by
> >KaZaA) would be suitable for decentralizing this, if
> >not for the fact that these networks are fragmented in
> >nature ­ a search does not reach all nodes in the
> >network. Clearly, in order to deliver high quality
> >telephony with the lowest possible costs, a third
> >generation of P2P technology (“3G P2P”), or Global
> >Index (GI) was a necessary development and represents
> >yet another paradigm shift in the notion of scaleable
> >networks. The Global Index technology is a
> >multi-tiered network where supernodes communicate in
> >such a way that every node in the network has full
> >knowledge of all available users and resources with
> >minimal latency."
> >
> >Does anyone have any idea how they have done this
> >securely, reliably, and with low latency? Also, what
> >exactly is the "key" into this index (the phone
> >number?)  If they have truly achieved this then it is
> >ground-breaking work on their part.
> >
> >Brad
>
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