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> It would probably be lower than that on average, but certainly some hops
> would be a week latency. Probably most requests would have 6 hops at
> most for success... more with premix.

When you've got latency like that, you really want to optimize the
throughput - for instance, replicate entire data stores, rather than
waiting a week to fetch the key, only to find a dozen other keys in the
metadata and having to wait another week to ask for those.

Such a high latency system is really, really useful, but it'll look
very, very different from today's Freenet or I2P.  At least, from my
understanding.

> The point is that the dark-freenet architecture has a future.

Whatever you build will have a future - you're a good coder, and
while there are some technical issues I disagree with you about,
as long as you're working on it, you'll be able to keep it alive.

This thread however, was about redundancy - whether Freenet was
moving towards reinventing something that can already be done with
existing tools, or could be done cheaper by extending systems.

Redundancy makes sense if there is a fundamental problem with the
alternatives, or if there's a new idea that'll work better for
people.  Your time is scarce, and as we're all on the same side,
its reasonable for people to want to make the most out of your
contributions.  Doesn't mean you have to agree with their
conclusions, but reasonable to expect people to ask why.

> So some peers in A have a trust relationship with peers in B?

Thats up to peers in B.  Some may choose to connect with only
trusted peers in A, while other peers in B may choose to connect
with a wider selection of peers in A.  That is, in addition to
connecting with peers in B or C (for those peers in C which it
has a trust relationship with).

> You haven't answered the point, anyway - client nodes are supposed to be
> able to contact anyone, right?

All routers (in A, B, or C) can contact anyone, but not all routers
can contact each other directly, and a router needs to know another
one's public keys to reach it.

> > Ok, so you now agree that Freenet/dark and I2P with restricted routes
> > both offer the same amount of 'dark'ness as long as there is a West?
>
> Well...
>
> Some things we need to get straight in order to make a proper
> evaluation:
> - A node in C will only connect to a node in B which it has a trust
>   relationship with.

Right.  Or, in theory, they could connect to another trusted node in
C, but that blurs the line between B and C.  Lets just call peers that
C trusts and contact B, for simplicity.

> - A node in B will only connect to a node in A which it has a trust
>   relationship with.

Not necessarily.  Its up to B to decide.  Depends upon the threat model
of B and the peers in C which it is helping.  Not all peers in B have
to be controlled by the same organization.

> - All chains from C start C, B. The second hop, outgoing, is always in
>   B. No?

The first hop from C reaches a peer in B.  The second hop may reach a
peer in A, B, or C.  How B delivers that message to the next hop may
vary.  Practically, C will get better performance out of peers that B
can contact directly, and hence, rank their profiles better than peers
they must reach indirectly.

Now, if you want to look at a wacky situation, if peers C1 and C2 are
connected to the peer B1, its not implausible for C1 to profile C2 as
a "fast and high capacity" peer, but its not likely, since to do so,
C2 or B1 would have to had given C1 the routerInfo (public keys) to
C2 (which doesn't necessarily have C2's direct contact information).

But thats kind of goofy, so for the most part, you can just say that
the second hop from B1 will be to another peer in either B or A that
B1 has a connection with, since that'll get profiled as being the
'best' path by C.

(how does C1 know which peers B1 is connected with?  it doesn't!  At
least not necessarily - C1 will start up with some pretty bad
profiles, and pick some slow peers at first, but the iterated hill
climbing of I2P's peer selection should improve that over time.  Or
B1 could cheat by giving C1 some profile data to start off with, since
they're trusted)

> - If so, this would mean that all nodes inside the Wall must be directly
>   connected to nodes outside the Wall.

Peers in B may be within the Wall, with peers in C contacting them.

> - Both traffic analysis and traffic sanctions (as opposed to arresting
>   people) are *much* *much* easier on the border.

Unsure.  Insufficient data for me to answer.

>   Freenet/dark could have a substantial internal darknet; this is not
>   possible with I2P, correct?

Peers in B and C may contact each other, build tunnels through each
other, without crossing the Wall.  I'm not sure if this answers the
question, but "substantial" is a bit fuzzy.

> - If a node in C wants to talk to another node in C, it will probably
>   have to go through not only B, but also A. Correct?

Not necessarily, but probably.

> If B is a scarce resource relative to C, it has a *serious* impact 
> on performance, and therefore on usability.

Peers in B and C would have a trusted relationship, which makes me
question whether they'd have the scarcity issues found on an open
network, as they know the impact and value of that scarcity.  The
likelyhood of running I2Phex instead of susimail or Syndie is
probably low.  Peers in B also know which peers in C exceed
reasonable usage too, and could take corrective measures (aka talk
to them, remove the spyware from their computer, etc).

> It also has a significant impact on security, in that EVERYTHING has
> to go over the border at least once.

Not necessarily, but it'll do so if the performance measurements
suggest it.  There are further tweaks we can do (e.g. offering
different tunnels to other peers in C that do not cross the border),
but thats beyond the horizon of reasoning about (I'm a pretty good
coder, but I'm not that fast ;)

> Are my assumptions above, and my analysis, reasonable?

Reasonable, though there are the clarifications above.

> > I'm not going to argue about what happens once there isn't a West.  We
> > will have bigger fish to fry before we reach such a point.
>
> Guns aren't everything. Information matters. And I don't believe that
> prohibiting anonymous p2p would necessarily be perceived by the public
> at large as a significant step towards despotism.

As I said in another mail, two soldiers on the same side may disagree
as to how best defeat a common foe.  Suggesting tactics and strategies
here about such a situation would not be productive.

=jr
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