Re: [Help-gnunet] New to gnunet

[Christian Grothoff]

On Sunday 11 April 2004 06:34, Steven wrote:
> I've been using freenet for a while now (mostly because I didn't know about
> freenet) and I'm pretty excited about trying out gnunet.
>
> There are some things about freenet that I find very interesting, and I'd
> like to know if they are, or will be implemented in gnunet:
>
> FEC encoding of splitfiles.  When you upload something to freenet, it
> creates extra blocks, that can be used to "heal" files on the network.

Right, that's definitely a nice feature.  Nevertheless, don't expect something 
similar to show up in GNUnet anytime soon (I would not mind a sound patch 
that achieves something similar, but I don't think anyone with the necessary 
expertise is currently working on this, so don't get your hopes up).

> Intelligent routing.  Supposedly as your node "learns" about the freenet
> network, it learns where to search for certain types of data.  This kind of
> routing (I think) is supposed to give a little direction to your queries,
> so it doesn't blindly wander across the entire network (like gnutella).

There is some learning in the GNUnet routing code.  It works differently 
though (not by query but by context).  

> I 
> guess this reduces network load.  I don't understand "bloom filters" but it 
> sounds like it may be used to achieve the same goal.

No, bloom filters are only used to reduce disk accesses. 

> I suppose that the 
> intelligent routing would make it hard to find files that are indexed on
> the hard drive rather than uploaded to the network.

Right, which is one of the reasons why the 'learning' algorithms work 
differently in the two designs.

Christian