Hornet
December 3rd, 2004, 08:29 AM
Hornet p2p recently posted to freshmeat.net, it's a mod of antsp2p. While many of you might think right off the bat "Another p2p application has been modded, so what". In this case it's a big deal. Antsp2p biggest problem isn't a lack of features or bad design. It's instability and frequent broken upgrades, also upgrading really isn't optional as most of it's users will upgrade and thus anyone not running the latest version will soon lose connectivity to any peers and access to content. Hornet not only provides much needed consistancy for end users, it also provides a network seperate from the often broken antsp2p beta network.
Ok so what's the catch, it contains adware or something nasty like that, or submits profiling details to the authorities or any other number of underhanded things right? Wrong, it's clean, totally clean and written in pure java, no possibly infected installers, no bugged .exe files. If your still not convinced, just decompile it's .jar and class files for yourself and see. You could spend hours, days, years looking for anything bad and be left empty handed because there is nothing to find.
Now that you've hopefully been convinced it's clean, what about stable and worth using? Well the current longest runtime for it is more than 60 hours, with no crashes or bugs in sight.
Ok what about speed, how fast is it's networking. Well surprisingly fast for an anonymous filesharing application. One user reports already seeing over 1gb uploaded, 1gb routed and is aware of roughly 76gb of content. Considering that as more users join the network the amount of traffic will only increase and currently is considered to be low. It's truely an amazing find for any p2p user.
Ok so where is the downside, there has to be one right? Well yeah there is otherwise it would really be too good to be true. The downside is hashing content takes awhile and there is a issue of being flooded with queries, however they do not render the application unuseable. One thing to note is that chat and instant messeging isn't anonymous, though that's only of minor concern at the moment.
So what about resources, it's a major hog right? Well it does consume a considerable amount of ram, the most seen so far is just over 100mb. As to cpu resources, typically less than 20% on a 2ghz amd based system. Though expect more cpu resources to be used while hashing.
So just how long does it take to download and set up? Not very long at all. A 2mb download and a few minutes to install and configure (via a integrated wizard). Then for example about 12 hours to hash 50gb of content (basically just let it hash overnight) and your ready to connect. If you don't have any content you wish to share, then just connect and begin looking for content to download. What if you aren't interested in downloading content, well there are other things to do, such as chat, host anonymous websites (via the included webserver), there is also instant messeging (takes a few minutes to setup an account and configure the client).
A note on chat and instant messeging privacy, while the default chat feature connects directly to irc and is used mainly for network bootstrapping, there are some basic privacy features that keep newbies from easily finding out ip addresses based on the users nickname. The instant messeging also has such basic privacy features and with the added option of being able to connect through a proxy server. Overall privacy wise the instant messeging provides a safer and graphically better environment for chatting. One thing to note on bootstrapping to the network, it's really optional as to how users go about it. Users can exchange thier addresses and or peer caches with each other via instant messeging, anonymous email, whatever. Though the fastest way to connect is through irc. Once a user is connected, they don't have to remain connected to the irc server though.
So how large is the network currently and how large will it be? Truely there isn't anyway of knowing just how large it is or how many people are running the application. There could be several seperate groups of users running the application and never connecting to each other. The potential for that kind of network fragmentation exists, however it just takes one user per group to bridge the groups together. However that could be a good thing to, because it provides the ability for localization based on location, language, content, etc.
Why can't I find the source anywhere? Well since it's based on antsp2p, anyone that want's to create a simular application can go grab the ants source and roll thier own flavor (though it's easy enough to just replace the included graphics). However that isn't the reason. The reason is due to the sourceforge project registration taking longer than expected, however when they finally do the source will be posted in archive form and in a cvs.
What about documentation, a user guide? Currently no, one doesn't exist. However antsp2p's sourceforge site does link to documentation and help forums, since hornet is a mod, uses can learn how to use it from that documentation.
Ok can just anyone run it, what are the requirements. Well it requires java 1.4 or newer (preferably 1.5 as it is much faster). A network of some kind, lan, dialup, broadband. Two open ports. A decent machine, 1ghz 500mb ram. The application is os independant meaning that anyone running a windows, linux, mac or java vm capible machine can run it. When it comes to language anyone can translate it into thier native language (if it currently isn't supported).
Finally anyone really paranoid can ready futher details on the ants security, protocols and networking that is built into it at the antsp2p websites. Remember trust cannot be given it must be earned. Enjoy.
see http://www.hackerheaven.org/node/view/89
HORNET
Ok so what's the catch, it contains adware or something nasty like that, or submits profiling details to the authorities or any other number of underhanded things right? Wrong, it's clean, totally clean and written in pure java, no possibly infected installers, no bugged .exe files. If your still not convinced, just decompile it's .jar and class files for yourself and see. You could spend hours, days, years looking for anything bad and be left empty handed because there is nothing to find.
Now that you've hopefully been convinced it's clean, what about stable and worth using? Well the current longest runtime for it is more than 60 hours, with no crashes or bugs in sight.
Ok what about speed, how fast is it's networking. Well surprisingly fast for an anonymous filesharing application. One user reports already seeing over 1gb uploaded, 1gb routed and is aware of roughly 76gb of content. Considering that as more users join the network the amount of traffic will only increase and currently is considered to be low. It's truely an amazing find for any p2p user.
Ok so where is the downside, there has to be one right? Well yeah there is otherwise it would really be too good to be true. The downside is hashing content takes awhile and there is a issue of being flooded with queries, however they do not render the application unuseable. One thing to note is that chat and instant messeging isn't anonymous, though that's only of minor concern at the moment.
So what about resources, it's a major hog right? Well it does consume a considerable amount of ram, the most seen so far is just over 100mb. As to cpu resources, typically less than 20% on a 2ghz amd based system. Though expect more cpu resources to be used while hashing.
So just how long does it take to download and set up? Not very long at all. A 2mb download and a few minutes to install and configure (via a integrated wizard). Then for example about 12 hours to hash 50gb of content (basically just let it hash overnight) and your ready to connect. If you don't have any content you wish to share, then just connect and begin looking for content to download. What if you aren't interested in downloading content, well there are other things to do, such as chat, host anonymous websites (via the included webserver), there is also instant messeging (takes a few minutes to setup an account and configure the client).
A note on chat and instant messeging privacy, while the default chat feature connects directly to irc and is used mainly for network bootstrapping, there are some basic privacy features that keep newbies from easily finding out ip addresses based on the users nickname. The instant messeging also has such basic privacy features and with the added option of being able to connect through a proxy server. Overall privacy wise the instant messeging provides a safer and graphically better environment for chatting. One thing to note on bootstrapping to the network, it's really optional as to how users go about it. Users can exchange thier addresses and or peer caches with each other via instant messeging, anonymous email, whatever. Though the fastest way to connect is through irc. Once a user is connected, they don't have to remain connected to the irc server though.
So how large is the network currently and how large will it be? Truely there isn't anyway of knowing just how large it is or how many people are running the application. There could be several seperate groups of users running the application and never connecting to each other. The potential for that kind of network fragmentation exists, however it just takes one user per group to bridge the groups together. However that could be a good thing to, because it provides the ability for localization based on location, language, content, etc.
Why can't I find the source anywhere? Well since it's based on antsp2p, anyone that want's to create a simular application can go grab the ants source and roll thier own flavor (though it's easy enough to just replace the included graphics). However that isn't the reason. The reason is due to the sourceforge project registration taking longer than expected, however when they finally do the source will be posted in archive form and in a cvs.
What about documentation, a user guide? Currently no, one doesn't exist. However antsp2p's sourceforge site does link to documentation and help forums, since hornet is a mod, uses can learn how to use it from that documentation.
Ok can just anyone run it, what are the requirements. Well it requires java 1.4 or newer (preferably 1.5 as it is much faster). A network of some kind, lan, dialup, broadband. Two open ports. A decent machine, 1ghz 500mb ram. The application is os independant meaning that anyone running a windows, linux, mac or java vm capible machine can run it. When it comes to language anyone can translate it into thier native language (if it currently isn't supported).
Finally anyone really paranoid can ready futher details on the ants security, protocols and networking that is built into it at the antsp2p websites. Remember trust cannot be given it must be earned. Enjoy.
see http://www.hackerheaven.org/node/view/89
HORNET