[GNUnet-developers] seperate transport layer app.

[Glenn McGrath]

Im looking for an efficient way to transport many small files.

I did some simple tests and found that http used 2100 Bytes and ftp 4300
Bytes to transfer a 800 Byte file, tftp only used 1076.

http and ftp have a disadvantage over tftp in this test as they use TCP
which requires a 3 packet handshake for each connection, if transfering
lots of small files or a big file over the same connection this
handshaking is much less of a disadvantage. 
Even so, i doubt any TCP protocol could be as efficient as UDP for small
files... especially if the files are below the common MTU of 1500 Bytes.

The efficiency of TFTP is ok, but its still a very noisy protocol, every
packet of data thats sent has to be acknowledged with another packet, i
dont see why the protocol cant allow the packets to be acknowedged in
batches inside one packet.

TFTP doesnt try to be secure either which is another disadvatage..
although im not sure what security features should be provided.

So i think a UDP based file transfer protocol could be done better.

I remember a lot of attention was paid to efficiency in the GNUnet
transfer protocol, but the strong anonymity and security that GNUnet
provides will also add an overhead.

So what i was thinking of is perhaps making a library out of GNUnet's
underlying UDP transport scheme, that way it could be used for traditional
FTP/HTTP class file transfers where anonymity/security isnt a major
consideration, and GNUnet could add an anonmyity layer and stronger
security over the top of it.

I realise Cristian is away, im not about to jump into implementing it,
just something im thinking about, anyone else have any thoughts on wether
its a good/bad idea ?



Glenn