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

[Duncan B. Cragg]

Wes Felter 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.
> 
Well, I also took my definition from four sources: Wikipedia,
Microsoft's original Darknet .doc, the website of the Darknet book, and
Ian Clarke's slides, where it is defined roughly as, well, this:
> Friendnet: "a network topology where every TCP/IP connection is backed 
> up by a meatspace connection" -- Gonze (synonyms: F2F, small-world network)
BTW, I thought I'd made up 'friendnet' as I was typing the email! And I
normally Google everything before I eat it.. =0)

And there is definitely some confusion in the use of 'small world
network': P2P researchers use it one way (for optimising the topology),
F2F-ers another (apparently, then, as a synonym for F2F) - this may be
the source of the apparent mix-up in the 'Freenet 2' slides.

> 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.)
Me too. >:-/

> 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.
Really hard? Some of the stuff I've seen in P2P generally looks really
hard to me..  And there's more to P2P than resisting attacks, like being
a useful technology for sharing photos.. =0) (I know that's not the
/raison d'etre/ of this list, but there are a lot of subscribers here
involved in 'civil' applications).

Cheers!

Duncan