[p2p-hackers] Learning how to build a P2P system

[Jim Dixon]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2005, Ian Wiles wrote:

> I should also probably give a brief explanation of the system I'd like
> to develop. Basically it's a system to pass around text messages in a
> forum/usenet type of setup. However I would like the news spool to be
> distributed across all nodes, presumably this would require some sort of
> mirroring/backup as well as each node goes offline.

You do understand that Usenet News _is_ a p2p system, right?  One that
works very well, despite immense and rapidly fluctuating loads, the
sporadic loss of peers, legal threats, hordes of utterly clueless users,
and sometimes uhm less clueful sys admins.

Source code freely available.  See for example
http://www.isc.org/index.pl?/innd

The design is ancient and barbaric, but it works.

>                                                   This is why I would
> like to find some information on the techniques used, as I'm sure they'd
> be better than the solutions I would come up with. I would like to do
> this using Java as it's the language I'm most familiar with at the
> moment.

Java is a practical tool for this sort of project.

--
Jim Dixon  jdd at dixons.org   tel +44 117 982 0786  mobile +44 797 373 7881
http://xlattice.sourceforge.net         p2p communications infrastructure