[freenet-dev] Wierd clustering behaviour again

[Michael Rogers]

Matthew Toseland wrote:
> - Locations of nodes are strongly clustered around 0.0.

Could this be due to some kind of bias in the collected data? For 
example if the network is less of a small world than expected, is it 
possible that you're only sampling swap requests within one area of the 
network?

Or a more paranoid explanation: if I regularly reset my location to 
(Math.random() * 0.02 - 0.01), swapping would spread these locations 
around the network and the nodes would end up clustered around 0.0.

How hard would it be to carry out this attack? Every node that joins the 
network creates a properly-distributed location, and every node that 
leaves the network destroys either a properly-distributed or a 
badly-distributed location. Depending on the churn rate, a single node 
resetting its location every few hours might be enough.

Is there any way to prevent this? Oskar's suggestion of occasionally 
switching to a random location would mitigate the problem, but not 
prevent it entirely.

Cheers,
Michael