On Sun, Apr 28, 2013 at 7:57 PM, John Dillon <john.dillon...@googlemail.com> wrote: > Have we considered just leaving that problem to a different protocol such as > BitTorrent? Offering up a few GB of storage capacity is a nice idea but it > means we would soon have to add structure to the network to allow nodes to > find > each other to actually get that data. BitTorrent already has that issue > thought > through carefully with it's DHT support.
I think this is not a great idea on a couple levels— Least importantly, our own experience with tracker-less torrents on the bootstrap files that they don't work very well in practice— and thats without someone trying to DOS attack it. More importantly, I think it's very important that the process of offering up more storage not take any more steps. The software could have user overridable defaults based on free disk space to make contributing painless. This isn't possible if it takes extra software, requires opening additional ports.. etc. Also means that someone would have to be constantly creating new torrents, there would be issues with people only seeding the old ones, etc. It's also the case that bittorrent is blocked on many networks and is confused with illicit copying. We would have the same problems with that that we had with IRC being confused with botnets. We already have to worry about nodes finding each other just for basic operation. The only addition this requires is being able to advertise what parts of the chain they have. > What are the logistics of either integrating a DHT capable BitTorrent client, > or just calling out to some library? We could still use the Bitcoin network to > bootstrap the BitTorrent DHT. Using Bitcoin to bootstrap the Bittorrent DHT would probably make it more reliable, but then again it might cause commercial services that are in the business of poisoning the bittorrent DHT to target the Bitcoin network. Integration also brings up the question of network exposed attack surface. Seems like it would be more work than just adding the ability to add ranges to address messages. I think we already want to revise the address message format in order to have signed flags and to support I2P peers. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Try New Relic Now & We'll Send You this Cool Shirt New Relic is the only SaaS-based application performance monitoring service that delivers powerful full stack analytics. Optimize and monitor your browser, app, & servers with just a few lines of code. Try New Relic and get this awesome Nerd Life shirt! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic_d2d_apr _______________________________________________ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
