Since nobody else has responded, I'll weigh in.
First off, you're asking two different questions:
Ivan Shmakov wrote:
Abstract
There're (several?) BitTorrent-specific DHT's, and the P2P
anonymity protocols (such as GNUnet) seem to (effectively)
implement their own DHT's. But is there any kind of a
“universal” (i. e., transport protocol-independent) DHT? And if
not, why?
This is really a non-issue. Some DHT's run directly over IP (UDP), some
over TCP, some over some over something higher in the stack (say SSL,
HTTP, or HTTPS) - but regardless of the transport protocol, the DHT
algorithm maintains its own routing and overlay protocol that is
inherent to the specific algorithm.
Unless:
a. you want to run over something other than IP (say over raw 802.x), or,
b. you want some kind of inter-DHT interoperability (not feasible with
current algorithms),
Transport independence seems like a non-issue.
What seems to be missing, however, is a “generic” DHT network
that could be used to search both the relevant metadata (such as
.torrent or Metalink files), and the peers participating in a
particular data exchange (and the respective protocols they
support), using one or more of an extensible set of identifiers
(including BitTorrent infohashes, GNUnet URI's, and the plain
SHA-1, SHA-2, or SHA-3 values.)
A "generic" DHT is a completly different issue, and seems to further
break into two issues:
1. A common algorithm: Given that DHTs are still very much a research
area, it seems unlikely that we're going to see one DHT to rule them all
anytime soon. You pick one of the more mature ones (e.g., Chord,
Pastry, Kademlia, ...) for an application and go from there.
2. A common interface, say an algorithm-independent URI scheme: This
seems feasible, as the functionality of DHT's is very basic
(store/retrieve/delete key-value pairs, maybe with a search function
added). Such a scheme could be as simple as using the basic HTTP
operations (GET/PUT/DELETE/?for searching).
Miles Fidelman
--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra
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