Last I read about it the performance was directly linked to the size of the network. In Freenet, if I remember correctly, larger number of nodes with the same content is proportional to the speed of the content download. And the content spreads to other nodes automatically, so if the network is big and demand for the content is big the content becomes very quickly downloadable (it's both "near" in terms of hops between nodes and there are more nodes with better bandwidth).
So I think that such networks will be niche until enough governments try to censor internet at once. This will make enough people interested in networks like Freenet to make their performance ok. I would like for Freenet to be adopted much faster and on a greater scale without some cataclysm for free speech, but it doesn't look like it's possible :(
Not really. The emphasis in freenet is on crypto and anonymous distribution / plausible deniability, not moving huge amounts of data. What parent says is that content gets easier to reach with more nodes compared to average FN content, not that it will (likely ever) be faster to download than with BT or similar.
Right, but in the best case (the content is stored on all neighboring nodes in FN) the only speed difference would be in crypto algorithms used and protocol peculiarities (handshakes, key exchange or something like this). I think? I mean, if the content is not further than one hop, the Freenet functions very similarly to torrent. Or am I mistaken?
What I thought was bad about freenet was that it was/is every-imaginable-goody-of-encryption all in one application blob. It seems like what you would want instead would be peer-to-peer software with series of optional encryption layers. Getting adoption with faster unencrypted layers would allow user to start using encryption easily when "things get rough".
Perhaps some of the other things are closer to this.
I find that I like I2p quite a bit, but I'm not as fond of the reference implementation. It's in Java, which makes running it on small systems more difficult, and it routes traffic by default.
Routing by default GREATLY improves the network, but may be undesirable/unrequested behavior by people.
For you I2P users, What are you using for P2P software, I2PSnark, iMule, or I2Phex? I tried it a few years ago, but didn't have much success in finding anything. Any tips for setting up, searching, performance tweaks?
Yeah. I want to host an i2p site on my AWS free tier account but can't because it will exceed the 15 GB bandwidth limit due to all the volunteer routing.
If you're interested in running networking applications on small hardware, you may be interested in the Beaglebone. It's more expensive, but vastly outperforms the Pi with regards to network I/O. The Pi is awesome for video, however.
It's ENTIRELY possible that that I didn't tune it correctly, but when I was looking at it as a routing underlayer for Tavern.com, it didn't leave me a whole lot of resources for running my apps.
Agreed. These systems have been around for a while, but as we see, haven't been widely adopted. So why? What's a good theory as to why these ones haven't taken off? If we can identify why these haven't taken off we can build the next one better.
More that bittorrent was significantly faster and more convenient for users. In general, the more anonymous you want to make a network, the worse the tradeoffs involved will favor performance. Tor, for example, is designed to be low-latency, such that you can actually use instant messaging etc... but if an entity has the ability to monitor enough onion routers simultaneously it is actually trivial to pinpoint the origin of a message. This can be countered with traffic mixing, random delays, fake traffic, etc... all of which significantly increase latency and reduce bandwidth.
Your definition of "superior" may imply vastly different trade-offs. If you want files fast, then they are quite inferior to Bittorrent. The aforementioned protocols can vary a bit in what they do well, but in general the goal is to protect the identity of participants from hostile peers on the network. With Bittorrent, the goal is to transfer files efficiently with no regard for privacy, and it's very good at it.
Would performance increase with average internet speed (upload), right now it's ~5.34 MBit/s[1] which probably gets worse when hopping through several nodes. It's a shame Ookla doesn't provide latency statistics. I'm sure ping is a big factor too.
Might be interesting to see if a few computers strictly on a LAN could communicate quickly over networks like these or if the actual software is slow.
Key is efficient caching. So there are more seeds than leechecrs. This is also true with Freenet and one of the points which I really like Freenet & GNUnet versus other protocols. Older versions of GNUnet didn't have cache eviction at all which I found to be major longterm issue, but they fixed it after discussing the topic. Btw. Bittorrent could be also modified to provide caching, but currently it doesn't and that wastes a lot of bandwidth. Tor doesn't use caching either, and wastes even more bandwidth.
Now would be a good time to give variuous good organisations cash.
I just sent the EFF $100.00 earlier this evening. Needless to say, I concur wholeheartedly with this sentiment. Slacktivism and clicktivisim or whatever are nice, but if you aren't in a position to do anything else, sending cash to advocacy / activism groups like the EFF is probably the most straightforward way to advance causes you support.
For my money, so far this year, that means supporting the EFF, NRA, Gun Owners of America, Libertarian Party, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, Second Amendment Foundation, Grassroots NC, and the International Mountain Bicycling Association. I think the FSF will be getting a donation from me soon as well. Probably the ACLU as well.
Well, we all have to make choices, and that's the great thing about living in a free and open society: We get to actually make those choices. I can understand why you might feel the way you do, but I consider defense of the 2A and gun rights to be one of the most critical issues of all, so a slightly greater portion of my disposable "support causes" dosh goes to gun rights groups. But that's OK... I'm just one man, and no one man by himself can do it all. I just do my part as best as I can. There are other people (perhaps yourself) who will do it differently and maybe send the EFF the bigger check.
Ya know, honestly, I don't think this is really the place to get any deeper into that. I mean, I don't mind talking about it, but it's not really on-topic here at HN. And as soon as I give you an answer, somebody is going to fire back telling me I'm wrong, and why... and then somebody else is going to chime in, and we're going to be rehashing a debate about guns that's been argued over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again...
If you're really interested though, shoot me an email and I'll be happy to discuss it "out of band" w/ respect to Hacker News.
Their stance is limited to opposing 'green hats' who are selling to customers that don't intend on fixing the flaws (buying a hacker's silence) and selling to governments whom intend on using the exploits for clandestine operations.
The thing is, performance must be at least decent if the authors of these protocols want people to start using them.