anet-devel — General development mailing list. Only ANet developers can post.

[ANet-devel] Re: I'm *SO* impressed by FreeNet!

[Dale T. <dal...@88...>]

How else can you enter information into the network anonymously?  I was
thinking of a similar approach using recursively wrapped RSA encryption.  I
was going to add some features that would make the network harder to spam.

How would you solve the problem?  In the scheme you have preposed (2.7
Anonymous two-way data flow) you must trust the proxies for anonymity to be
maintained.  For example the proxy you connect to could be malicious and would
know who you are communicating with.  Without using encryption how would this
be avoided?

thanks,

- Dale

On Mon, Dec 04, 2000 at 08:55:43PM -0500, Benoit Nadeau wrote:
> Anonymous my a**... YES! I'm jealous! Their protocol suck but they have
> so good PR (public relations) that thousands go their project site each day!
> 
> If they can't admit that their protocol is *NOT* anonymous at all, then
> I'll leave them to their fantasy...
> 
> >Key anonymity and stronger sender anonymity can be achieved by adding
> >mix-style ``pre-routing'' of messages. In this scheme, basic Freenet
> >messages are encrypted by a succession of public keys which determine the
> >route that the encrypted message will follow (overriding the normal
> >routing mechanism). Nodes along this portion of the route are unable to
> >determine either the originator of the message or its contents (including
> >the request key), as per the mix-net anonymity properties. When the
> >message reaches the endpoint of the pre-routing phase, it will be injected
> >into the normal Freenet network and behave as though the endpoint were the
> >originator of the message.
> 
> Hey, who wants to store *MY* porn of *YOUR* machine whithout asking for it?
> 
> ....
> 
> I'll send them a point by point list of all the limitations and problems in
> their protocol. As of now, my list is getting huge. And I have a really
> easy way to litteraly "eat" and destroy the entire contents of the network
> in mere days... So that if they don't listen to me at all ("shut up,
> newbie!"), I'll be able to demonstrate to them, legally, how their protocol
> suck...
> 
> - Benad
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> ANet-devel mailing list
> ANe...@li...
> http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/anet-devel

[ANet-devel] I'm *SO* impressed by FreeNet!

[Benoit N. <be...@ma...>]

Anonymous my a**... YES! I'm jealous! Their protocol suck but they have
so good PR (public relations) that thousands go their project site each day!

If they can't admit that their protocol is *NOT* anonymous at all, then
I'll leave them to their fantasy...

>Key anonymity and stronger sender anonymity can be achieved by adding
>mix-style ``pre-routing'' of messages. In this scheme, basic Freenet
>messages are encrypted by a succession of public keys which determine the
>route that the encrypted message will follow (overriding the normal
>routing mechanism). Nodes along this portion of the route are unable to
>determine either the originator of the message or its contents (including
>the request key), as per the mix-net anonymity properties. When the
>message reaches the endpoint of the pre-routing phase, it will be injected
>into the normal Freenet network and behave as though the endpoint were the
>originator of the message.

Hey, who wants to store *MY* porn of *YOUR* machine whithout asking for it?

....

I'll send them a point by point list of all the limitations and problems in
their protocol. As of now, my list is getting huge. And I have a really
easy way to litteraly "eat" and destroy the entire contents of the network
in mere days... So that if they don't listen to me at all ("shut up,
newbie!"), I'll be able to demonstrate to them, legally, how their protocol
suck...

- Benad

[ANet-devel] Updated Part 1 in docs

[Benoit N. <be...@ma...>]

I just added some stuff in "Part 1: Introduction" in the docs. Don't be
affraid to tell me if there's something you don't understand, or if you
have better ideas.

You might guess from this posting that Parts 3 and 4 will be deferred to
later this week. If that's your case, then you're right... I had another
open source project to finish (http://source.bungie.org/)...

And Dale, you can send your docs to this mailing list this Monday if you
can. Even if they don't "agree" with the way I defined ANet in my docs,
send them anyways. There might be some good ideas we want to keep, or it
may be actually better than what I made until now.

Ajaya, I know (I'm just guessing) that your email server may be terrible,
but try to participate a bit in the discussion. We're trying to define
something new here, and you won't be able to find any docs on "distributed
networking", since it's something that was invented less than 2 years
ago with Gnutella...

One last thing. From now on, let's try to keep the subject header ("Re:
[ANet-devel] Re: Basic requirements") and the replies clean by removing
"[ANet-devel]" and the footer that the mailing list adds. And if that's too
much trouble, I'll remove the footer completely...

- Benad

[ANet-devel] Re: Basic requirements

[Benoit N. <be...@ma...>]

>I think we're getting mixed up here between the message protocol and the needs
>of applications built upon it.  If you have a generic anonymous message
>library
>that allows you to send a message between two nodes of the distributed network
>then you'll be able to use it to send queries or data transfers.

Not data transfers, as somehow two nodes must become proxies that
communicate directly with each other (IP to IP), and not through the
network. But the data that is transfered from the node to the proxy is
transfered like queries.


>I'm thinking about the mechanics of moving a piece of data around the network
>no what the nodes do with the data once they have it.

Ooohhhhh... You mean the "packets" of data that will be moving around the
network?


>The query is a broadcast message - please can I have a file called X.

You got it.


>Static data is a piece of a file - please transmit this data from A to B.

Uh... No. "Static" means that some data stays for a long time in the
network. Maybe I wasn't clear enough about that. So, unless you want a file
to "stay" in the network (with cache systems), you never use static data,
especially when you just want to transfer some data from A to B. "Static
data" means that the data will be distributed to the whole network (like
queries), but is bigger than queries and will stay in the network a longer
amount of time. "Two way data transfer" means that two nodes want to
exchange between each other and that the data should neither be cached nor
duplicated to the whole network. Those two nodes can be any node on the
network, not just two nodes that are adjacent that are connected to each
other, IP to IP, as part of the network.

What I'm trying to do here is to define the way ALL "packets" of data
should behave on the network, so that any service you can think of can work
on top of that. Think about what happens with ports in TCP. You don't
accept connections on ports you don't know how to handle. But then,
let's say that you want to make a new service in ANet. If it worked like
TCP (behavior is not defined), everyone on the network would have to
download your service module to make the module work on the network,
otherwise you might find it difficult to connect to the network, as no one
can accept the connection for your service, as no one knows how to handle
your "packets". The idea of splitting structure and behavior works great in
TCP/IP, as you connect to one specific IP address, but that cannot work in
a distributed network.

So, behavior has to be defined in ANet.


>If you want a chat type system then you'll also need - please transmit this
>data from here to this group of addresses.

That shouldn't be allowed. The goal of ANet is to have no need to be
identified by any "address" whatsoever. So, either you "find" the addresses
(or more precisely the proxies) that want the data with queries and then
upload the data to them, or you duplicate the data to the whole network as
static data.

Chat should then work as queries, as it already did some time ago in Gnutella.

- Benad

Re: [ANet-devel] Re: Basic requirements

[Dale T. <dal...@88...>]

I think we're getting mixed up here between the message protocol and the needs
of applications built upon it.  If you have a generic anonymous message library
that allows you to send a message between two nodes of the distributed network
then you'll be able to use it to send queries or data transfers.

I'm thinking about the mechanics of moving a piece of data around the network
no what the nodes do with the data once they have it.

The query is a broadcast message - please can I have a file called X.

Static data is a piece of a file - please transmit this data from A to B.

If you want a chat type system then you'll also need - please transmit this
data from here to this group of addresses.

thanks,

- Dale

On Fri, Dec 01, 2000 at 07:56:14PM -0500, Benoit Nadeau wrote:
> >Hi,
> >
> >Can you explain how you a query differs from a 'message' in the system?
> >Surely
> >a query is just another packet of data that needs to be communicated to
> >different node/nodes in the system?  I think that we are probably talking
> >about
> >the same thing.
> >
> >For this list I was focusing on the anonymous messaging part of the
> >application.
> >I'm am a bit confused about what you mean in section 2.2 of the documentation
> >about handling static data.  How would you propose to give the
> >functionality of
> >Freenet without using a similar system?
> >
> >What do you mean by static download (about Freenet)?
> >
> >thanks,
> >
> >- Dale
> 
> A query is like the searches in Gnutella: the data to transfer is small,
> and doesn't need to exists on the network for a long time. There is no
> check to see if a node already received a query. Thus, a node might receive
> duplicate queries.
> 
> For static data, I'll explain with an example. Let say you want to have
> newsgroups in ANet. Each message in the newsgroup should exist on the
> network for some days and the data is usually much bigger than a usual
> query (> 20 bytes). As all static data, each message will be marked with
> it's creation date (when it was sent), and a pseudo-unique key (128-bit
> random number). When there is some unused bandwidth, a node that has some
> static data will try to distribute it. But since the data is relatively
> big, the node will always ask its adjacent node if it already has the
> message. This check will make some extra trafic, but this might save a lot
> of traffic if the other node already has the data. Because static data is
> long-lived, the nodes will try to cache the data as long as they can (or
> want), thus most of the recent postings will be available from the network.
> 
> The big difference with FreeNet is that using static data is NOT
> recommended for file downloads, that is when a node wants to download some
> data from another node. This is because the "anonymous two way data
> transfer" allows any kind of download, while the transfer, in both
> direction, remains anonymous. Even using static data to store some files on
> the network for a long amount of time shouldn't be allowed. An example. I
> want to download the latest version of emacs (about 20MB, IIRC). If file
> downloads are made using static data, the 20MB would have to be
> "duplicated" to ALL the nodes on the network before the file reaches me.
> Unless half the nodes on the network would want exactly the same file, the
> precious network bandwidth will be wasted. A new version of emacs, and look
> at that network speed drop...
> 
> So, the difference between a query and static data is huge, because they
> are handled completely differently.
> 
> I'll put an example of a distributed network with my "passive file
> browsing" service.
> 
> - Benad
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> ANet-devel mailing list
> ANe...@li...
> http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/anet-devel

[ANet-devel] Re: Basic requirements

[Benoit N. <be...@ma...>]

>Hi,
>
>Can you explain how you a query differs from a 'message' in the system?
>Surely
>a query is just another packet of data that needs to be communicated to
>different node/nodes in the system?  I think that we are probably talking
>about
>the same thing.
>
>For this list I was focusing on the anonymous messaging part of the
>application.
>I'm am a bit confused about what you mean in section 2.2 of the documentation
>about handling static data.  How would you propose to give the
>functionality of
>Freenet without using a similar system?
>
>What do you mean by static download (about Freenet)?
>
>thanks,
>
>- Dale

A query is like the searches in Gnutella: the data to transfer is small,
and doesn't need to exists on the network for a long time. There is no
check to see if a node already received a query. Thus, a node might receive
duplicate queries.

For static data, I'll explain with an example. Let say you want to have
newsgroups in ANet. Each message in the newsgroup should exist on the
network for some days and the data is usually much bigger than a usual
query (> 20 bytes). As all static data, each message will be marked with
it's creation date (when it was sent), and a pseudo-unique key (128-bit
random number). When there is some unused bandwidth, a node that has some
static data will try to distribute it. But since the data is relatively
big, the node will always ask its adjacent node if it already has the
message. This check will make some extra trafic, but this might save a lot
of traffic if the other node already has the data. Because static data is
long-lived, the nodes will try to cache the data as long as they can (or
want), thus most of the recent postings will be available from the network.

The big difference with FreeNet is that using static data is NOT
recommended for file downloads, that is when a node wants to download some
data from another node. This is because the "anonymous two way data
transfer" allows any kind of download, while the transfer, in both
direction, remains anonymous. Even using static data to store some files on
the network for a long amount of time shouldn't be allowed. An example. I
want to download the latest version of emacs (about 20MB, IIRC). If file
downloads are made using static data, the 20MB would have to be
"duplicated" to ALL the nodes on the network before the file reaches me.
Unless half the nodes on the network would want exactly the same file, the
precious network bandwidth will be wasted. A new version of emacs, and look
at that network speed drop...

So, the difference between a query and static data is huge, because they
are handled completely differently.

I'll put an example of a distributed network with my "passive file
browsing" service.

- Benad

Re: [ANet-devel] Re: Basic requirements

[Dale T. <dal...@88...>]

Hi,

Can you explain how you a query differs from a 'message' in the system?  Surely
a query is just another packet of data that needs to be communicated to
different node/nodes in the system?  I think that we are probably talking about
the same thing.

For this list I was focusing on the anonymous messaging part of the application.
I'm am a bit confused about what you mean in section 2.2 of the documentation
about handling static data.  How would you propose to give the functionality of
Freenet without using a similar system?

What do you mean by static download (about Freenet)?

thanks,

- Dale

On Thu, Nov 30, 2000 at 08:12:44PM -0500, Benoit Nadeau wrote:
> >Here is the list I have so far:
> >
> >1) Must be able to send messages across the network anonymously.
> >    - Yeah I know this is basic but it doesn't hurt to say it ;)
> >
> >2) Must be difficult/impossible to tell from which node in the network the
> >message originated.
> >
> >3) Must be difficult to perform traffic analysis on the network.
> >    - e.g. Activity patterns must be shielded.
> >
> >4) Must be resilient to malicious nodes.
> >    - e.g. Spamming nodes, flooders etc...
> >
> >5) Must not rely upon a central server.
> >
> >6) Must try to make efficient use of bandwidth.
> >    - Not at the expense of 1-5 however
> >
> >So which ones have I missed?
> 
> If "send messages" is for queries, then you missed the static data and the
> data transfers.
> 
> - Benad
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> ANet-devel mailing list
> ANe...@li...
> http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/anet-devel

[ANet-devel] Re: A starting point

[Benoit N. <be...@ma...>]

>I must admit I'm not that keen on doing a file transfer program - FreeNet
>and Publius can already do this.

But they can't do anonymous downloads. And FreeNet is stuck with static
download, which is just terrible.

Most importantly, file transfer is the only protocol that uses all of the
core. Queries is when you want to start downloading something ("I want file
X in directory Y"), static data for the listing of the directories, and
anonymous data transfers for downloads. (tell me if you didn't understood
this while reading my docs)


>I think we need something that people haven't done before.

A protocol that isn't attached to any specific use and can do more that
just tranfering files? I know users (not coders) may not see this, but our
protocol could be "one size fits all"...


>But all of the applications can be built apon a basic messaging platform.

Gnutella already does that, and you can see the speed problem.
Are you talking about queries or static data? Queries is like the searches
in Gnutella, while static data is mostly like FreeNet (I think).


>Also how do people feel about making the core library LGPL?

Wow! Great idea!

- Benad

[ANet-devel] Re: Basic requirements

[Benoit N. <be...@ma...>]

>Here is the list I have so far:
>
>1) Must be able to send messages across the network anonymously.
>    - Yeah I know this is basic but it doesn't hurt to say it ;)
>
>2) Must be difficult/impossible to tell from which node in the network the
>message originated.
>
>3) Must be difficult to perform traffic analysis on the network.
>    - e.g. Activity patterns must be shielded.
>
>4) Must be resilient to malicious nodes.
>    - e.g. Spamming nodes, flooders etc...
>
>5) Must not rely upon a central server.
>
>6) Must try to make efficient use of bandwidth.
>    - Not at the expense of 1-5 however
>
>So which ones have I missed?

If "send messages" is for queries, then you missed the static data and the
data transfers.

- Benad

[ANet-devel] Basic requirements

[Dale T. <dal...@88...>]

Hi,

I thought it would be good for all of us to list what the basic requirements of
the protocol must be.

Here is the list I have so far:

1) Must be able to send messages across the network anonymously.
    - Yeah I know this is basic but it doesn't hurt to say it ;)

2) Must be difficult/impossible to tell from which node in the network the
message originated.

3) Must be difficult to perform traffic analysis on the network.
    - e.g. Activity patterns must be shielded.

4) Must be resilient to malicious nodes.
    - e.g. Spamming nodes, flooders etc...

5) Must not rely upon a central server.

6) Must try to make efficient use of bandwidth.
    - Not at the expense of 1-5 however

So which ones have I missed?

thanks,

- Dale

[ANet-devel] Re: A starting point

[Dale T. <dal...@88...>]

Ok...

I've tried the documentation edit and it works fine.  So we'll be able to
correct each others spelling etc... ;)

I think it is a good idea to have linux as the initial platform and a messaging
application would be an ideal starting point.

I must admit I'm not that keen on doing a file transfer program - FreeNet and Publius can already do this.  I think we need something that people haven't done before.  But all of the applications can be built apon a basic messaging platform.  The underlying library shouldn't care if it's transferring a chunk of a document or a query - it just has some data to transfer between two places.

Also how do people feel about making the core library LGPL?  We have a bigger
chance that more people will use it which would allways be good?

I've done some TCP/IP programming in C & Java so I'm sure it won't be too much
of a problem.

thanks,

- Dale

On Wed, Nov 29, 2000 at 08:48:53PM -0500, Benoit Nadeau wrote:
> >Hi,
> >
> >While I'm waiting to be approved for the devel list I'll e-mail you both
> >directly.
> 
> Done!
> 
> 
> >I think it would be useful to define the scope of the initial design -
> >e.g. get something working as quickly as posible so that we have a
> >framework in
> >which to test our ideas.  I don't think it will be possible for us to get
> >a really good
> >idea of how to approach the problem until we have tried a few designs.  Agree?
> 
> Yep. Let's start the TCP/IP module on Linux, stdio for the interface, and
> the bare minimum for the rest. But I never did TCP/IP on Linux, and
> LinuxPPC on my machine has some weird problems with the network card...
> Ajaya, could you help by coding some TCP/IP?
> 
> 
> >I'd suggest that the first step would be to design the interface and possible
> >implementation of a distributed anonymous messaging library.  Once we have
> >this defined then it should be easy to build applications on top of it.
> 
> That's actually what I meant by "Core Module": a kind of "distributed
> anonymous messaging library".
> 
> 
> >It would also be good to get some ideas on the table for a first application -
> >something that can show that our library works and is well founded?
> 
> The first service could be some kind email, that is, sending a text message
> to everyone on the network as a "distributed query". But the file browsing
> service wouldn't too complicated to code, once all the other modules
> (Interface, Core, Direct-to-port and TCP/IP) are done.
> 
> 
> >I've started writing down some ideas for a messaging protocol based on the
> >stuff that Benoit has already done (good start BTW).  I will hopefully have my
> >ideas concrete enough to put them in an e-mail by Monday.
> 
> Great! I will add some docs (Part 3: Network Optimization and Part 4:
> Security Systems), but they won't be complete, especially the security one.
> This will mean that we'll have an "idea clash" next Monday! Great! (I
> already said that...)
> 
> You all have "Editor" access to the docs, so you should be able to add and
> edit your docs directly to the site. But don't ask me how. Maybe this means
> that you'll be able to click on "Admin". Their web site is far from being
> "administrator-friendly"...
> 
> 
> >PS Did you come up with ANet to mean Anonymous Network?
> 
> Anonymous and Anarchy. I'll write this down on the web site.
> 
> .....
> 
> THE SSH LOGIN WORKS!
> http://anet.sourceforge.net/ WORKS!
> 
> I'll work a bit on it this weekend, but it's not my top priority.
> Chris, could you do some web pages for me? Hehe. Just a joke. ;-)
> 
> - Benad
>