[p2p-hackers] scalability (was: p2p framework)

[Greg Bildson]

The only thing that may not scale is the network bootstrap (initial entry
point) mechanisms.  Then the scalability is mostly constrained by how many
new users join the network in a day - and those systems can be decentralized
more as well so that issue could go away.

I see no reason why the steady state network can't scale.  I believe you are
making suppositions that are just not true.   Guess that would make this
statement more of a nautology.  ;-)

Thanks
-greg

> -----Original Message-----
> From: p2p-hackers-bounces at zgp.org [mailto:p2p-hackers-bounces at zgp.org]On
> Behalf Of Elias Sinderson
> Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2005 3:14 PM
> To: Peer-to-peer development.
> Subject: Re: [p2p-hackers] scalability (was: p2p framework)
>
>
> Daniel Stutzbach wrote:
>
> > I find it amusing when people claim a functioning 2-million peer
> > system doesn't scale. :-)
>
> 'Scalability' is relative, and the definition is often contingent upon
> the requirements of the system at hand. For example, an online banking
> application that could handle 2M active users would clearly be
> considered scalable enough for the application domain. However, when
> most people use the term these days, and especially with respect to P2P
> systems, they are using the term in reference to internet-scale
> scalability. To whit, while a 2M peer system may seem impressive at
> first blanche, a 20M peer system is better; a 200M peer system is _much_
> better; a 2B peer system begins to approximate what we really want (at
> slightly less than half the size of the IPv4 address space).
>
> The above represents a shift in scale of 3 orders of magnitude,
> something gnutella is clearly not capable of. In this sense, it is a
> tautology to say that gnutella doesn't scale. Sure, it may work well
> enough in a limited sense, but it is a fallacy to confuse that with true
> scalability. I mentioned the IPv4 address space, which is something like
> 4.29B or so. This was thought to be more than enough addresses, yet now
> we find ourselves in the middle of shifting to IPv6, which has on the
> order of 3.4*10^38 addresses... Excessive, perhaps, but at least there's
> room to grow.  :-)
>
> So, yes, Gnutella may scale well enough, but it clearly doesn't define
> (much loess aproach) scalability in any meaningful sense.
>
>
> Regards,
> Elias
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