[p2p-hackers] In search of the Darknet....

[Wes Felter]

Duncan B. Cragg wrote:
> 
> I Googled, but neither 'F2F' (friend-to-friend) nor 'Darknet' are
> discussed in the P2P-hackers archives. Are P2P-hackers just not
> interested in them?

Some people seem to have the definitions a little mixed up IMO.

Darknet: "a collection of networks and technologies used to share 
digital content" -- Biddle, England, Peinado, and Willman.
The "dark" aspect connotes that they're really talking about sharing 
content *illegally*, against the wishes of its owner.

Friendnet: "a network topology where every TCP/IP connection is backed 
up by a meatspace connection" -- Gonze (synonyms: F2F, small-world network)


The darknet is really a legal construction, not a technical one. For 
whatever reason, politics doesn't come up much on this list. (I'm happy 
to see it remain that way.)

But why haven't friendnets taken off? I don't know. Maybe because 
they're really hard, and their primary beneft is to resist attacks that 
are not yet commonplace.

Wes Felter - wesley at felter.org