[p2p-hackers] Dynamic IP

[Paul Campbell]

On Wed, Feb 23, 2005 at 02:36:56AM +0800, Chris wrote:
> Reading thru B.Ford's paper, it just occurs to me that if there's somewhere
> a server who's willing map a user name to a udp ip:port tuple, many p2p app
> will not need things like Dyn2Go to resolve a dynamic ip server.
> Is there any such thing ?

First off, it is not necessary anyways. If the p2p network uses the very
same network that maintains the distributed database of files/data also
maintains a distributed database of usernames (perhaps mapping to a public
key as a signature scheme), then there is no need for the service you
mentioned. Most of them have this capability to one degree or another.

The other place where it becomes "necessary" is for a "first contact point"
or initial entry into the network. This is already essentially solved by
maintaining a sufficiently large list of contact points (say a list of the
ip:port list of 1000 known P2P contacts) that there is zero chance of not
finding an initial entry point. It is still a sticky issue for "new"
entries...someone who downloads the software needs something for an initial
contact point that has enough permanence to withstand months or years of
no updates. This can be provided at a relatively low-bandwidth level by a
web server. It also provides a fall back for more or less gauranteed first
contacts.