First, a question: Is there a recommended number of connections to have on the darknet? Minimum (obviously 1 to function, 3 for your node to be doing much for the network)? Maximum (in terms of bandwidth? CPU? Memory? Before something else starts to fail?)?
And an observation: I believe there's been some discussion about the quality of connections coming from IRC. I set up a node this morning, exchanged a few noderefs over IRC, and had 6 connections and a fairly functional node quite quickly -- I was able to load all the sites in the default index, plus a random media file mentioned on IRC, without much trouble and far faster than I would have expected. After a little thought, I've decided that IRC connections probably exhibit at least some of the small world properties required for good routing, so it might not be as bad a way to get connections as some have feared. People tend to get on to exchange noderefs, do so with several people, and then get off. This means that any two people you get connections to this way are more likely than average to have exchanged references -- the basic small world criteria. Also, since it seems there is correlation between times people are on IRC, that would also advance the small world criteria -- people who are on at similar times are more likely than average to exchange refs, and this is a transitory property. These effects probably occur in fewer dimensions than social networks do, but I believe the small world properties should still hold, enabling some routing success. Thoughts? Evan Daniel
