On 14/06/11 04:42, Julian Cain wrote: > On Jun 13, 2011, at 8:38 PM, Jan Brittenson <b...@rockgarden.net> > wrote: >> I think all you need is something that can be turned on at specific >> times, to get a message out. Then shut it off. People will have >> their phones on, then all of a sudden they get service, a text >> message or two, after which the service promptly drops again. A >> station only needs to be on long enough to get the message out. > > ... and to receive the acknowledgement regarding said message.
Acks may or may not be necessary, depending on the protocol. With a Usenet-style flooding protocol it's sufficient to transmit each message opportunistically to everyone you meet and discard duplicates - no acks are needed. >> I think the main challenge is how to prevent a regime from >> hijacking the network. This will probably require an organized >> structure with isolation, redundancy, a revocation protocol, and >> careful safeguarding at the top. Funnily enough I'd argue for the opposite approach - the way to make it robust isn't to safeguard the top, it's to have no top. ;-) Imagine a completely distributed publish-subscribe network organised into "channels", where each channel's subscribers flood the channel's messages among themselves using a simple Usenet-like protocol. How do we prevent agents of the regime from drowning such a system with spam? Solution 1: Restrict who can post to each channel. (For example, by associating each channel with a public/private key pair - subscribers discard any messages that aren't signed with the private key.) That would create a bloggish/twitterish style of interaction where each channel would have one author (or a small group of mutually trusting authors) and an unlimited number of readers. Solution 2: Peer moderation. In this model, any subscriber can post signed messages to a channel, but each subscriber will only forward messages signed by authors who that subscriber has manually marked as not being spammers. Thus new authors can't reach a wide audience until they've won the trust of some other subscribers. Solution 2 involves more work for subscribers than solution 1, but it allows multi-way discussions, whereas solution 1 could potentially devolve into people shouting past each other. Fortunately both solutions require similar infrastructure, so we can build them both into the same system and see which one people prefer. > The number of dissident operated devices need only outweigh a > "regime" in order to protect the network. The same rules apply to > most overlay networks. Not really - most P2P and wireless overlays can be jammed by a small number of malicious nodes, including the mesh protocols that have been discussed for these "internet in a suitcase" type ideas. Cheers, Michael _______________________________________________ p2p-hackers mailing list p2p-hackers@lists.zooko.com http://lists.zooko.com/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers
