Is there anybody here?

[Jeffrey Spoon]

Hello, I have a reasonably long query, but just checking to see if
there's anyone here to answer it, as the place seems to be deserted.

Cheers

[David C. DiNucci]

Post by Jeffrey Spoon
Hello, I have a reasonably long query, but just checking to see if
there's anyone here to answer it, as the place seems to be deserted.

There are some lurkers here who are sometimes coaxed to come out of the
woodwork when an interesting or provccative issue arises. If you're
going to compose your query to go anywhere, there's nothing to lose by
posting it here, too, if it's on topic.

I have seen a few issues in the news lately that would certainly be on
topic here, including information regarding the Sony/IBM cell
architecture (maybe especially programming techniques) and some of the
attention Globus is getting lately. If others don't jump on these soon,
I hope to.

In any case, thanks to Kirk for keeping a thread of signal going here,
even sans noise. :-)

-Dave

[Jeffrey Spoon]

Post by David C. DiNucci

Post by Jeffrey Spoon
Hello, I have a reasonably long query, but just checking to see if
there's anyone here to answer it, as the place seems to be deserted.

There are some lurkers here who are sometimes coaxed to come out of the
woodwork when an interesting or provccative issue arises. If you're
going to compose your query to go anywhere, there's nothing to lose by
posting it here, too, if it's on topic.
I have seen a few issues in the news lately that would certainly be on
topic here, including information regarding the Sony/IBM cell
architecture (maybe especially programming techniques) and some of the
attention Globus is getting lately. If others don't jump on these
soon, I hope to.
In any case, thanks to Kirk for keeping a thread of signal going here,
even sans noise. :-)
-Dave

Ok, thanks for appearing.

I'm not actually sure if this is the right group, but there doesn't seem
to be a relevant p2p group that actually talks about how p2p works,
rather than "I can't get Kazaa to work" etc etc.

I am trying to figure out a system which is pretty much a distributed
usenet system. It is intended to be peer to peer system where every node
holds part of the entire news spool. So in essence each node is a news
client and news server. The obvious problem is when a node goes down, it
will take part of the spool with it. That would require some sort of
backup system. And suppose the backup also goes down? I'm not sure if
this is strictly a distributed database, as the intention is to send any
relevant articles zipped in a stream of files (assuming they're big
enough). Then each node which wants to fetch news (subscribed groups
etc.) will search for it amongst the other nodes. This is a problem too,
would the search be too slow? I know things like Gnutella only search a
portion of the network to speed up searches, but if the spool is
distributed then basically the whole network would have to be searched?

What are the kind of issues I should be aware of, and is this actually
do-able or is it going to be a nightmare?

Thanks

[tstrufe]

Gidday Jeffrey,

Post by Jeffrey Spoon
I'm not actually sure if this is the right group, but there doesn't seem
to be a relevant p2p group that actually talks about how p2p works,
rather than "I can't get Kazaa to work" etc etc.

there actually are quite a few good and very active mailing-lists on p2p
(what, by the way, _is_ p2p? :-D) topics, as for example

P2PRG<p2prgATirtf.org>
p2p-hackers<p2p-hackersATzgp.org>
e2e<end2end-interestATpostel.org>
the sometimes somewhat metaphysical <decentralizationATyahoogroups.com>

and some more...

comp.distributed is nice and has some quite good discussions every now
and then, anyways, the first two mailing lists are much more focused on
p2p and a lot more active.

HTH, Best!

Thorsten

[Jeffrey Spoon]

Post by tstrufe
there actually are quite a few good and very active mailing-lists on
p2p (what, by the way, _is_ p2p? :-D) topics, as for example
P2PRG<p2prgATirtf.org>
p2p-hackers<p2p-hackersATzgp.org>
e2e<end2end-interestATpostel.org>
the sometimes somewhat metaphysical <decentralizationATyahoogroups.com>
and some more...
comp.distributed is nice and has some quite good discussions every now
and then, anyways, the first two mailing lists are much more focused on
p2p and a lot more active.
HTH, Best!
Thorsten

I don't generally use mailing lists but I'll have a look at these. I'm
not finding much technical info in the usual places. Thanks for those :)