Author: Michael Rogers Date: To: Matthew Toseland CC: tech Subject: Re: [Tech] Tit for tat is difficult was Re: Distributed file system
using routing inspired by Freenet
Matthew Toseland wrote:
> This is interesting. We will eventually need some form of tit for tat,
> won't we? Not necessarily in inserts, IIRC we talked about it as a way
> to prevent an attacker flooding opennet with spam requests/inserts?
> It's something we've talked about for a long time anyway...
Yup, I used to think it would work (at least for requests, inserts are
more complicated) but I'm not so sure any more.
Imagine a node modified so that when it receives a request, it returns
the data if it's in the cache or the store; otherwise it returns RNF
with the remaining hops - it never forwards requests. This node will
return fewer hits than a normal node, but it might return more hits *per
byte of bandwidth used*. In that case, even if there's a TFT-like
incentive mechanism, it might make sense for selfish users to modify
their nodes. But if everyone does that, the network collapses.
