[tor-talk] Bittorrent starting to move entirely within anonymous overlay nets

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Fri Jun 17 04:55:14 UTC 2016


On 6/10/16, Mirimir <mirimir at riseup.net> wrote:
> But there's still the traffic load. Or maybe, one could consider it as
> chaff. Just sort of, though. Right?

If that's the old "OMG, too much" argument... load re anon overlay nets
may be more like bitcoin's interrelated variables... difficulty, txfees, reward,
watts, price, txrate, etc... they'll slide nicely around to compensate until
some unsolveable fundamental limit is reached. ie:
Private (non-exit/I2P) use of these nets... if they slow, users will start
talking urging more nodes, which they'll readily deploy themselves since
private is low risk and satiates their use case. If the required node count
to support n-million users starts blowing up CPU/RAM, devs will
start getting poked to work on layering that. Even parallel nets
with usage charters may arise by then as a given networks adversary
resistance begets users begets trust begets honoring narrower charter.
Besides, load happens to useful nets, no point trying to stave it off
(nets are anon so staving is a no anyway), and trying to stave makes
the stavers look stupid.
A little education helps too, users will self regulate if they sense that,
"Oh shit, I know this net is used for <insert activism I like>, but I can't
even get my own <whatever> through, so I better ease up on variable <x>".

Is it chaff, and good as to filling otherwise quiet parts of the net?
Perhaps. But as in other GPA threads, I think fill traffic may need
to be actively managed to defeat that, rather than just flooded.


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