[freenet-dev] The perils of releasing unusable software, or why opennet sucks

[Colin Davis]

Again, I'm not the right guy to ask, but- The node can't test to see if 
it's externally accessible, and we can't trust it when it says it can 
get outside. It's safer to test externally.

Julien Cornuwel wrote:
> What about the node doing all the tests to know if it's eligible to be 
> a seednode and then, if it is, ask the user ?
>
>
> Colin Davis a écrit :
>> I admit that I'm woefully ignorant when it comes to proper design, 
>> and I'm not among the smartest people in the room.
>> That said, these don't seem like difficult problems- Certainly it's 
>> because I'm missing the complexity.
>>
>> I think it the installer should present the option, because that's 
>> when users are most likely to hit Yes.
>> They don't want to futz with things.. If the question comes up, and 
>> there is no default answer (As I showed before), They'll think about 
>> it, then choose.
>>
>> I'm not entirely convinced that emu having a list of 10-20% of the 
>> user's IPs is a horrible thing.
>> Keep in mind- We do not have to give this entire list out to each 
>> requester, nor do we have to accept data into the list without 
>> testing it.
>> It's only added to the list if the user explicitly chooses to do so, 
>> and even then, we're not sharing it.
>>
>> Imagine if you will that there is a PHP script on 
>> freenet-project.org.. The  script takes in a noderef, and saves it to 
>> a file on the machine. [1]
>> A helper application then attempts to connect to the Noderef.. It 
>> records if it is successful or failure and the time/date.
>> The helper app loops through all the submitted noderefs, and 
>> continues to store their success/failure and the time/date.
>>
>> When we find that we've successfully connected to the node over a 
>> long enough time span, it then gets added to VerifiedNodes.txt
>>
>> When you start Freenet for the first time, the installer can ask 
>> "Would you like to download the freshest set of seed nodes? Having 
>> the freshest set of seed nodes allows freenet to get started much 
>> faster. Without it, it may take up to a day to become integrated into 
>> the network"
>>
>> When they make a request to freenet-project.org/getSeeds.php, we 
>> return 20 random seeds from the VerifiedNodes file.
>>
>> The helper app continues to test nodes from the VerifiedNodes.txt.. 
>> If it hits a certain number of failures to connect, it removes the line.
>>
>>
>> Assuming there were a way to pass Freenet a noderef from the command 
>> line, and get back a success or failure when trying to connect, this 
>> is something that I could code up in a bash script in about an hour, 
>> and I'm not a very good programmer. I'd be happy to help if you'd like.
>>
>> I'm sure I'm missing the complexity somewhere.
>>
>> -Colin
>>
>>
>>
>> [1] Or SCP's it to another machine to do the processing. That doesn't 
>> matter for this conversation.
>>
>>
>>> it. We also (for obvious reasons) don't want the seednodes.fref to
>>> become something like the yellow pages for opennet (where not everyone
>>> but almost everyone has an entry and no checks are being made).
>>> The reasons are:
>>> - - freenet is anonymity software, we don't want to publish an almost
>>> complete list of our users
>>> - - if there are many nodes installed and uninstalled, the list becomes
>>> crappy, because many entries lead nowhere, it will take even longer for
>>> new users to connect
>>> - - the seednodes.fref should stay under a few MB
>>> - - we don't want it spammed or even worse flooded with entries from
>>> attackers
>>>
>>> regards
>>> Neo at NHNG
>>>
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>>
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