Goals

I'd like to offer up these goals for the network. What goals are missing? Please respond with your thoughts on how these goals are already met by an existing network, or how they could be met by a new network.
  1. Security of transactions. Uploaders, Downloaders, and Data Facilitators must be protected from their transactions.
    1. This goal must be maintained assuming some fraction of participating nodes are subversively working in collusion, and that all network traffic between participants is visible to the attacker.
    2. This is the highest priority and no compromise outside of the necessity for practicality will be made at the expense of this goal.
    3. Note, security from participation is NOT a goal. That is the goal of a darknet.
    4. Protection of Data Facilitators excludes the use of public exit points from the network. These serve as legal and technological attack points.
    5. Specific entry points for data should also be avoided. These also serve as legal and technological attack points.
  2. Anyone at anytime can participate in the network given a computer and Internet connection. It should be a public network, not a private darknet.
    1. Darknets require existing relationships with others already participating. This would exclude a large portion of the population that would like to participate but know of no other people already participating or willing to participate.
  3. Trust is dispersed over a user defined number of nodes.
    1. Trust is based on the probability that some faction of nodes known are NOT evil. This faction is defined by the user on a per access basis.
    2. The plain text of the transaction must not be revealed until it has passed through enough nodes that the user is comfortable with the probability it has passed through a trustworthy node as compared to the risk of the transaction.
    3. This is one of the biggest problems with many anonymous peer to peer networks. Requests and transactions are plain text to immediate nodes. The legal recourse is that you could simply be passing the request through from someone else. However, for some networks an immediate node could perform statistical analysis of the transactions to yield a fairly strong certainty of a user's general network activity.
  4. No centralization.
    1. Centralization is very tempting, especially given the previous goals. There are many benefits including performance, reliability, and security. However, centralization provides a small number of attack points to cripple or completely disable the entire network.
    2. Proper centralized servers can also be expensive, requiring solicitation for donations, or other money making schemes such as advertisements.

Monday, September 15, 2008

Pfyshnet GUI released!!

Pfyshnet 0.0.8 has just been released!  Featuring our GUI!

Download and enjoy.

A bunch of folks are waiting for this release before trying out pfyshnet.  I'll ask that everyone be patient.  Please commit your node to running for a day or so.  Fast growth while the network is small will create some growing pains, but once a little stability forms, things should start working nicely!

If you don't already have a node, simply download the pfyshnet_bin_0.0.8.zip file fromhttp://pfyshnet.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Downloads.  Unzip it.  Create a shortcut to the executable pfyshnet.jar file on your desktop.  Then double click!

You won't be able to use it for a period of time while it generates your node's keys.  This could take hours, or even up to a day depending on your hardware.  During this time you should disable “poll for return data” in Edit->Settings.  If you don't, you'll keep getting pop-up windows until your node has created its keys.

Once you start using the GUI, pay special attention to the little dot in the lower left corner.  When this icon is red, it indicates your node/gui is doing something.  You can submit requests during this time, but don't get impatient and submit the same request a bunch of times, or you'll just kill your node.

Also be careful with board updates.  If you submit too many board updates at once you'll swamp your node.  (the little dot will be red for a long time).  It will probably still work, but much slower.

If you have a node already, and want to upgrade.  Kill your node nicely (kill or Ctrl-C).  Then copy the new pfyshnet.jar file to your existing node installation.  Then restart your node.  Note: Both your node and the GUI will now be started with java -jar pfyshnet.jar.  If you just want to start the node, run like this:

  java -jar pfyshnet.jar -node

If your node is already running, and you just want the GUI, run like this:

  java -jar pfyshnet.jar -gui

NOTE: You must upgrade your node to use the GUI!  The GUI uses client features that did not exist in 0.0.7.

Lastly, we know the GUI still needs some work, but we think it's nicely usable for people to get started.  Please make note of bugs and feature requests.

Posted by at 1 comment:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)