[p2p-hackers] ePOST: Secure, Severless Email

[Alen Peacock]

ePOST is a very interesting project.  Can you tell us a bit more about
freeloading and how you resist it in ePOST?  The Master's Thesis on
the website stated that you rely mostly on human administration to
ferret out freeloading.  I assume you have something else in place or
planned for the 'public' ePOST instantiation (if this is explained in
the NSDI draft, please forgive me -- I'm unable to access that link)
-- any comments on implementing a Samsara-like approach or experience
dealing with freeloaders in ePOST in general?

  thanks,
  Alen


On 5/5/05, Alan Mislove <amislove at rice.edu> wrote:
> As some of you may know, the FreePastry group at Rice University is
> developing ePOST, a secure, decentralized, p2p email system. The service
> is provided cooperatively by the user's desktop computers, and ePOST
> provides better security and fault tolerance than existing email systems.
> Email exchanged between ePOST users is cryptographically sealed and
> authenticated and the service remains available even when traditional mail
> servers have failed. ePOST gives users plenty of email storage (users can
> use as much as they contribute of their own disk space). Moreover, users
> don't have to entrust their email to a commercial provider, who may mine
> thier data, target them with advertisement or start charging them once
> they're hooked. ePOST has been running as the primary email system for
> members of our group for over a year.
> 
> ePOST works by joining a peer-to-peer network running a personal IMAP and
> SMTP server on your desktop, which is only for your email.  ePOST is
> backward compatible with existing email systems, and your ePOST email
> address works just like a normal email address - you can send and receive
> messages from non-ePOST users.   Additionally, you can use your existing
> email clients with ePOST, since ePOST provides standard IMAP and POP3
> servers.
> 
> A few of other features of ePOST are:
> - support for SSL connections
> - a data durability layer called Glacier, providing durability with up to
>   60% member node failures
> - support for laptops and machines behind NATs
> - support for networks with routing anomalies
> 
> More information about ePOST is available at http://www.epostmail.org/.
> ...