[p2p-hackers] ePOST: Secure, Severless Email

[Alan Mislove]

Alen -

In the design of ePOST, our target environment is primarily large
organizations and institutions.  For example, a university could replace
their existing email infrastructure with a distributed, organically
scaling system like ePOST.  Thus, since all users fall under a single
administrative domain, the need for explicit fair sharing defenses is
somewhat lessened.

That said, we have not made an special changes to ePOST for the "public"
installiation.  ePOST, however, does not preclude any of the existing
anti-freeloading techniques, such as Samsara (as you mention) and the
incentives-based work.  At the core ePOST just uses a DHT and Multicast
primitive to exchange and store messages; any techniques that work at this
level will translate naturally to ePOST. Additionally, if the use of the
public ring grows larger, we will look at applying these techniques to
ePOST.

Thanks,
Alan

On Mon, 9 May 2005, Alen Peacock wrote:

> 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