Freenet !

[Yeahright]

Hello everoyne :)

I was just wondering what everoyne's thoughts are on freenet. I looked into there network and it seems pretty cool if you're looking to hide from all of the legal garbage and scariness that is going on right now with file sharing. From what I could tell it is still a way of sharing, but doing so in a way where it is impossible of being cought.
So, what's the deal?

[Lucian]

Its not ready, check again in about a month.

[aqlo]

Lucian's right, Next Generation Routing is supposed to make it usable instead of the slow oddity it is right now. Not to say there aren't some great things there, just not practical for file-sharing purposes yet.

[Yeahright]

Thanks for the advice guys!
I guess I'll just check back in a bit to see what's going on with them in about a month, or so.

[a3ro3]

Something went really awry with NGRouting... The explanation is that's it's a "research project" and not even alpha type software. Excuses aside, it probably has some potential but I don't see it taking off for atleast 6 months.

[tMoD]

As I understand it, Freenet is slow because the way it goes about preserving anonymity results in a lightly connected network with many hops involved to reach a file. Each node only knows about a few neighbors and your neighbors rarely pass any information about their neighbors. Personally, I don't think that anonymity is necessary for a legally safe filesharing program. Freenet is good where anonymity really is required though, such as information sharing among dissidents living under oppressive regimes.

[Lucian]

No 6 months is alittle too long of an estimate, they have a paid programmer working on it 8+ hours a day, the main reason NGrouting isnt working is because of bugs, and due to the fact that multiplexing has not been added. Multiplexing allows a person to send and recieve data at the same time, currently Freenet only does one or the other, and its slow.

I say give it another month, 6 months is a bit ridiculousl.

[Lucian]

"Freenet is good where anonymity really is required though, such as information sharing among dissidents living under oppressive regimes."

Yes its also good if you have political viewpoints which the USA may not agree with, such as if you are a socialist or communist and you dont want to be harassed, it protects our freedom of speech including speech I dont like, such as NAMBLA, It allows people including us who's lives or jobs may be treatened if we speak up, to be able to speak up on things and reveal the truth, a good example of this could be the coverup WMD Iraq stuff, perhaps alot of people do know the truth about that but cant talk about it because they fear being fired.

So yeah there are legit reasons for us to have the ability to communicate in complete annonymous and private fashion, mainly because while we wont get killed for talking here we certainly can lose our jobs for saying too much. You dont think so? Ask Danny Glover, the Dixie Chicks and others.

[Malakai1911]

[...] that multiplexing has not been added. Multiplexing allows a person to send and recieve data at the same time, currently Freenet only does one or the other, and its slow.

I say give it another month, 6 months is a bit ridiculousl.

Multiplexing?

Uh. Are you _sure_ it cant recieve and transmit at the same time. Seems like a hokey explanation.

[eclectica]

Freenet is a p2p internet to replace the www network on regular servers that we're used to having. But using it for trading mp3s, seems to me to be doing it a disservice, because it is slowing down their network. I see its use as mainly for dissidents.

[jimmy90]

Freenet works, but it is slow.

IMO it will always be 'slow'. It has to do a lot to try to preserve anonymity.

But seeing as it is the only anonymous network I think Freenet/Frost are worth a good try.

[Yeahright]

Check this out!! I downloaded the software, loaded it on and gave the program full access to the internet, to recieve and send files. So, in other words, I let it act as a server, and also let it access the net. I wanted to try it out anyway. So, I went to their gateway to see if I could get the software to would work at all and it was sending and recieving. I freaked out and shut it down after seeing that it was sending/recieving for about a half hour and it was only 2% complete. That's right, only 2% and I have a BROADBAND CONNECTION! My question is what the hell was I sending over there network? It would send a lot more than I would recieve, like 50-80Xmore. I was watching my zone alarm meter send information, while I was in another application. The meter was even sometimes maxed out. So does anyone know what it could have been doing?

[eclectica]

So does anyone know what it could have been doing?
Nope. That's what's so cool about the program.

[Yeahright]

That doesn't seem cool to me in any way. I don't get it!

[Yeahright]

What if it was sending personal info, or something?, or maybe it was sending some of my mp3's. Does anyone know?
Either way, if and when freenet works, I'll be first in line! :fire

[stuperfied]

Isn't freenet a peer to peer conferencing centre?

[Malakai1911]

No stuperfied, its not conferencing. It's anonymous information exchange. That'd be the best way to describe it.

[origin]

I have never had the chance to check it out.Just from the looks of it and what I hear the p2p app has massive potential and could somedays become a major role player in the p2p world. It is still in developmental stages. Lets hope it gets better.

l8

[stuperfied]

Which one would that be?
http://search.cometsystems.com/search.php?qry=freenet&product=asearch

[aqlo]

Get a real search engine stuperfied, that one is hellishly biased

real freenet is here
http://freenet.sourceforge.net/

[stuperfied]

Comet put it's-self in my internet explorer as a search bar, I just havn't bothered to remove it yet.

[MP3Pr0]

Freenet routes information amongst computers constantly. So if you see your computer sending out stuff constantly, it's just stuff being routed from other people.

[Vlet]

Yeah, as Malakai1911 said, it's a sort of information exchange. The idea behind FreeNet is not "file sharing"; It is to protect complete freedom from censorship on the internet. Information is stored in an abstract manner on FreeNet making it impossible to locate who is storing what. because of this, information is always being router around, as MP3Pr0 said. If it were to begin being used for music and movies etc, it would be a waste of the original intention behind the network, and likely push the original intention of the network, freedom from censorship, out of the picture. Freenet is important because it can not be stopped (within reasonable terms), so as our world becomes more and more closed minded towards freedom of information, FreeNet is posed to be one possible solution to the problem.

[Sephiroth]

You all do know there is a freenet form here. Well you do now since i moved this thread to it..

Freenet is not a mainstream p2p program. it is for providing those who live in coutries that do not have a free press a way to anonymously access information so those governments cannot punish those people(ie. jail, "reeducation", bullet to the head). People have been saying oh freenet is the future of p2p for years now and that is not true because freenet goal is not to become the next napster or kazaa.

[aqlo]

Thanks Sephiroth :gj

Right Freenet is an enhancement to the standard internet that provides slow distributed proxying both ways to protect the identity of the "insertion" source. The traffic you see is you acting as such a proxy for data you are technically protected from being aware of (and therefore responsible for.)

[Ken17625]

Well, I think the traffic was a part of the whole "virutal information store" idea, where you donate part of your hard drive space to the network, which is the idea behind freenet. And, if I remember correctly, you're acting as a proxy for others (so to speak). This is probably the reason for the traffic.

But, Ken's just guessing.

[scenario]

we need magnet uri links fo frenet or waste

[Vlet]

those who live in coutries that do not have a free press

Oh, like the U.S.A.?

:;)

[Sephiroth]

Oh, like the U.S.A.?

:;)

hahahahah wow your soooo funny.. i mean the scarcastic genius that had to come up with that remark is just amazing that it could be done.

Yes lets all make cynical remarks and completely ignore the ones who are truely suffering...

[stealthspy]

No, I agree with 6 months. They've been working on this how many years now?

[Vlet]

hahahahah wow your soooo funny.. i mean the scarcastic genius that had to come up with that remark is just amazing that it could be done.

Yes lets all make cynical remarks and completely ignore the ones who are truely suffering...

Who is being sarcastic?
Who is ignoring the plight of other nations?

[gnutellafan]

Check this out!! I downloaded the software, loaded it on and gave the program full access to the internet, to recieve and send files. So, in other words, I let it act as a server, and also let it access the net. I wanted to try it out anyway. So, I went to their gateway to see if I could get the software to would work at all and it was sending and recieving. I freaked out and shut it down after seeing that it was sending/recieving for about a half hour and it was only 2% complete. That's right, only 2% and I have a BROADBAND CONNECTION! My question is what the hell was I sending over there network? It would send a lot more than I would recieve, like 50-80Xmore. I was watching my zone alarm meter send information, while I was in another application. The meter was even sometimes maxed out. So does anyone know what it could have been doing?

It was doing exactly what it was designed to do. It uses your computer as a proxy. It WAS NOT sending any of your personal info. It was recieving info from the network and then resending it out to the network. That is how it keeps ppl anonymous

[Yeahright]

[QUOTE]It was doing exactly what it was designed to do. It uses your computer as a proxy. It WAS NOT sending any of your personal info. It was recieving info from the network and then resending it out to the network. That is how it keeps ppl anonymous"

Gnutellafuan,

I understand that. I thought of the same thing. While it was uploading away, however, there was an indicator that said it was only 2% done configuring my connection. Or something to that nature. From what I remember it somehow configures your connection, and then once that is done, it assigns you some type of a user number. That user number can then be shared among friends. Unfortunately I haven't had the time to try and figure out what was going on.

Maybe it's assigning some special way for your computer to route into the network. I don't know! ?? :sw

[PIRHANA.A]

Ack, god. Get a clue.

The percentage bar is to show heavily loaded your freenet 'node' is. It's nothing to do with configuring your connection, this you do manually when you install freenet.

Freenet does not send anything personal stored on your hard drive. If it did then people would have noticed as the project is _open source_.

The data that your node is sending an recieving is data that your node is storing its own data store, you can specify how large this is. The bigger the better as it means your more likely to have the data that other nodes are requesting off you. You have no control what Freenet sends and recieves from this data store nor can you tell what the data is as it is encrypted.

This is how Freenet works, if you don't like go use Kazaa or something.

[DIMA2001]

Let's see how the network works:

U -- N -- (up to 21) -- N -- D

N= general node
U= uploading node
D= Downloading node (you)

So, your chunk is transferred over all of the nodes (and they save this data without even knowing what it is in their caches, too). If the HTL (Hops-To-Live) = 4, then this chunk will go through 3 nodes (+ uploader). If the chunk was found on the HTL of 21 ... well ... not a problem.

The current problem (without NRG) could be:

U - N - N - 0 - D
U= uploader
D= downloader (you)
N= general fast node
0= general half-dead node

Now, if the 0 is a modem user, other nodes don't matter and you will get the whole thing not faster than the slowest peer on the way.

What should NGR do?
All the peers run stats about neighbor peers. If they are fast, they are used, if they are slow, they are only served. That means such an arch:

dead/modem/isdn-->dsl/cable-->T1/T3<--dsl/cable<--dead/modem/isdn

That means that the fastest nodes are in the center of the network to ensure optimal transfer speeds. On the way to you there will be nearly no dead nodes anymore since they will be outcasted to lower levels of the network to be served optimately (they will still download very fast since the peers on the way to the content are faster).

Unfortunately, the current NGR state is _unstable+buggy_, i estimate nearly 1-1.5 months for getting a fast release of freenet. Then, the network should reorganize it in ~ 1 week and become fast. Then, the publicity might begin booming freenet and new peers without stats will come along, the speed of freenet will be broken for another week. But then, it should work.

Let's hope that it WILL be so fast. NGR will work - i sumulated it on a special network simuilation machine and it works!

BTW: Freenet does NOT send ANY info about you. There are two things known about you on freenet: your IP and your port. But what your IP is doing on the network ... it is unknown since all of the transfers go over proxies (and you are also a proxy).
If you hear "your IP is known on the freenet"...well, it is also known everywhere. When you connect to zeropaid, when you connect to 100.100.100.1** or when you start your favorite client. But when you use the above services (and nearly all of the other) except freenet, it is KNOWN on every node of the internet what you are currently doing.
On freenet even your own node is not really knowing what you are doing (what is in the cache/share)
Government: :finger
People 100 years ago couldn't live with 20% of the taxes.
Currently the countries make you pay over 55% !!! And people don't whine. And they want MORE taxes - for CDRs, for computers, for even breathing soon =)