Julian started a Usenet thread at comp.distributed (viewable at Google) about the Golden Gateway — how do you find the first node in a P2P network? Without any reliance on any centralized service?
Viewing the responses, there is an assumption that entry points have to be known at some point — through a friend or a server or some other static entry. Through some form of publication.
To me, a P2P cloud that is dependent on some form of publication, central server, or another centralized method of discovery, has iron in the core and is therefore vulnerable to take down from some external agency. I am not being paranoid; I am stating a technical fact.
This whole point of networks being invulnerable to external pressures is the basis of one of the legal arguments being made by the recording industry in actions involved with P2P music-sharing sites such as Kazaa and Morpheus.
The P2P music-sharing networks say that they are self-sustaining and can’t be shut down. However, this week, a glitch in a software update basically shut Morpheus down. Now Morpheus goes to Gnutella for P2P architecture support — does this make the network safe from take down?
I don’t believe so and in my next posting, we’ll look at the details behind my opinion.
