A better way to promote sharing
 

As many people are posting, and studies are finding, most gnutella users are freeloaders. I have to admit, I am one too. (Hey, I'm an economist, they taught me to do it in college...) It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone since there are no personal incentives for sharing but there is the penalty of bandwidth and computer resources. This is the externality that is killing the gnutella network.

The current ways of promoting sharing such as requiring one shared file or limiting download bandwidth as a percent of upload bandwidth are not working and were not very well thought out ideas to begin with. We need to unleash some economics on gnutella.


I have a proposal to the gnutella standard to promote and maintain efficient sharing.


Make it a “build up” game and set a price:

Think of it like those that sit and play “Everquest” for unbelievable amounts of time, people want to “build up” their resources. We can use this to gnutella’s advantage. By using good files like points, players can win by sharing the most useful files.

The price to download is to upload. Simple enough. This requires the client to keep track of the uploads and “useful files”. For every item that was sought to be uploaded, the user will obtain rights to download. This does not means that the file had to be uploaded or even completed from your computer (perhaps it was busy at the time with other uploads) but if you had the exact same file as someone else but it was being uploaded from their computer and not yours at the time, you should also get credit for sharing a useful file. That file should be marked by the client software as “useful” or with a cute star or a smiley face…. You get the idea. Also, the useful rating of the file should have a time limit of 1 month which will cause users to continuously need to strive to provide other users with good files rather than sit on some old outdated files and just be a leech. This policy will also eliminate freeloading by people that put a useless file in their share folder and start sucking the life out of gnutella.

For every useful byte that you share, you are allowed 10x that in return in full speed without bandwidth limitations. That means if you shared a file that was 1,000 bytes. As long as someone wants that file, and as long as you share that wanted file, you are entitled to 10,000 bytes at full speed in return for you contribution to the network. The client software can keep track of that. Otherwise, your total download bandwidth should be limited to 10 kb/s. However, if the max speed does not exceed 10 kb/s anyway, sharers shall not have their points deducted until they can download in excess of 10 kb/s.


Special “Tenure” rating:

Since sharing a single 3 Mb song is hardly sharing, it would be a good idea to promote some arbitrary amount of sharing that promotes putting files on the board. I’m saying 1 GB is a reasonable size that says, “Hey! I’m actually contributing to this network”. To those that share in excess of 1 GB, I would give them a “Tenure” rating for their service. Since not every file is a useful file, having 1 GB of useful files safely implies that the actual shared amount exceeds 1 GB by far. Users will need to share as much as possible and fill the demand of their fellow users to obtain and maintain the 1 GB tenure.

A tenure user sharing more than 1 GB of useful files should have unlimited bandwidth use of gnutella and also should be favored when downloading against “non-tenure”(10 kb/s) users. However, people entitled to their limited bytes at full speed are also treated as tenure for their limited bytes. So if multiple people on one server, a non-tenure user’s downloads will be paused if the server has limited bandwidth while tenure users download happily. Also, once sharing exceeds 1 GB, the user’s screen should turn gold and say “Tenure” and have fireworks to acknowledge their contribution to the gnutella network. Pride is good and necessary especially in an invisible place like the internet. Pride is the thing that can make something like gnutella work since no one is getting paid.

There are many inherent benefits to these policies. Many people will treat this like a role playing game where they build up useful files and obtain rights to download and obtain “Tenure” status. This will promote quality file sharing naturally and end freeloading by intentionally sharing useless files. This will also automatically ensure continuous quality improvement of the files being shared. People will be willing adhere to standards of file naming as renaming an identical file some other name will not likely get that file a “useful” status as people choose files with the most users providing it and not the odd ball. The speed of transfers should dramatically improve as more and more people seek to provide popular files for upload.

I hope this encourages discussion on how to improve sharing in gnutella. It would really be great if this or a more refined version of this can be implemented in the next gnutella standard. Thanks for reading.



critic

A similar proposal to this has already been made. If I remember correctly, the method was called 'Generosity Indicator', or GI

Look at this thread:

How to stop Freeloaders

My idea about this is that, in contrast to what you are saying, the generosity of a user should not be measured by the popularity of the the files his node is sharing, but by the amount of bytes it actually did upload over the last 48 hours divided through amount of bytes download at the same time.
I see two advantages in this:

First, while your method measures the potential usefulness of a node to the network, this one measures its actual usefulness. Remember, users can still cut uploads manually or limit their upload rate to 0.5 kB/s or something like that! There are probably still more possibilities how to cheat out the measurement as it

Second, this method is easier to implemement. Your method would mean drastic alterations to the protocol, since the nodes would need to exchange information about which files are popular and which aren't. Using the other method however, nodes would just add their GI-number somewhere in their http download requests. If the sharing host doesn't know what a GI is, it'll just ignore it (hopefully).

-

Then there is the question about how such a rating should be applied. You propose that it should affect the users download rate. I believe it could be less problematic if the GI would be applied like in this scenario:

Node A wants wants download file x from Node B, so it sends a http request to B. The user of node B has set the number of maximum simultaneous uploads to n. If B is providing less than n uploads to the network at the time the request from A arrives, A will get the desired file regardless of its GI.
The interesting question is what happens if B's upload slots are already taken. In that case B will compare A's GI to the GIs of the other uploading nodes. If it finds that A's GI is too low, A will get a 503. If it finds that A's GI is 5 or more points higher than the lowest GI of the other uploading hosts, B will open up an additional upload slot for a good network citizen. If it finds that A's GI exceeds the minimum GI by more than 10 points, it will even cut off the upload with the lowest GI if necessary.

I hope we will soon find the best solution.

Guido

Swarming
 

Hi,
the idea above sound interesting (it sounds like Mojo Nation [1]), but I guess Mojos can be faked. I have another idea to stop freeloading and improve download speed at once. My favourite is: Swarming.

Swarming means to distribute small parts of files all over the network and every servant takes part (even modem users). Please read more about advantages and technical details in the link above.

Also I think a philosophy of "healthy servant behaviour" is a very good idea (read more at Limewire [2]). For example a servant does allways share the download folder or _allways_ does allow 1-n upload slots (n depends on uplink bandwith) with a minimum bandwith, e.g. like Xolox does.
A Gnutella servant that does allow zero upload slots (most servants do this), does support freeloader and therefor is unhealthy to the network. Especially this behaviour must be stopped IMHO!

And finally the anonymous Gnutella network should be turned into a real community. Inside an anonymous network people intend to "take and go"... a community would encourage people to a much more cooperative behaviour. To achieve this goal there are various ideas: The users need a personal contact, a chat between clients. We should build structures which strengthen communities, e.g. more specialized horizons where people of a special interest (music taste, gamers, coders, etc) can find each other. People with similar interest intend to be more cooperative to each other. Or how about showing a "gnutella karma" which shows how much you have downloaded and how much you have given back. All this together could encourage users to be more cooperative, to be a part of the network. Let me say this again: Gnutella means sharing.

Some of my ideas. hope you like it, Moak. :)

[1] Mojo Nation http://www.mojonation.net/
[2] LimeWire article about Network Healt http://www.limewire.com/index.jsp/med_require

Anti-freeloading isnt a really good thing. I believe that users should share because they want too and not because others force them too.

Anti-freeloading plans rarely work if they work at all. Take Direct Connect for example they have an anti-freeloading feature by allowing users to set file/size amount shared and number of upload slots as restrictions. Go into anyone of those nodes and there will be probably 1-2 modem users the rest are all broadband. That is point number one it discourages modem or other narrowband users off the program and would discourage them off gnutella. Even with supernodes many modem users wouldnt be able to meet restrictions and the time to take to upload massive amounts or build up would be too long.

Antifreeloading features only help out broadband people and not all the users. Most places broadband isnt avaible, its too expensive, or in my case the backlog is so big you have to wait an extreemely long time to get it hooked up.

Number two it promotes the sharing of worthless files like copies of a group of files over and over, or corrupted/partial files and etc.

Lastly using DC as an example again it doesnt really improve download rates. Sure your search screen will be filled up with more crap but if downloads rarely go through or are slow then whats the use.

Also swarming was mentioned. Swarming isnt the holy grail. On the fasttrack network even though there is no way to get teh stats ill bet that more people freeload there than they do on gnutella. Swarming just makes freeloaders less noticeable it doesnt encourage users to share. Even though it uses less bandwidth to upload would it really be enough to convince someone who wasnt sharing in the first place to share? I doubt it.

Hmm, I still believe in "freeloaders are not bad" and swarming is a holly grail to integrate modem bandwith... do you personaly think there is a way out of the freeloader dilema?

Dilema? Its not really a dilema alot more people are sharing now on gnutella than a year ago when there were those funny news articles predicting gnutella death within a few months. I think people worry too much about freeloaders.

Information is the only thing really needed. I say let users see whos sharing and whos not and if freeloading bothers them then they can manually abort all they want.

Swarming wont intergrate modem users supernodes will. Using a supernode a modem user can download/upload the same as they would on a centralized program like napster was. Swarming just makes downloads a little faster thats it. It wont help modem users if just that is added because modem users will still use most of their bandwidth on host connections.

hmm
 

How did you come to this new conclusion, did I miss any article? All available statistics and articles [1] [2] point to the fact: most users on Gnutella are freeloaders.

Supernodes will not integrate modem users. Supernodes will together with search-caches: reduce backbone traffic + improve network topology + increase horizon (more available files).

I expect much more positive effects from swarming. I allready posted swarming ideas here, a short summary from that:
The bandwith of modem users is completely wasted right now and modem users are often "forced" to be freeloader. Actually this egoizm is contraproductive and means less files for all. While high bandwith users can share the traditional way, swarming is a key to make low bandwith users share with the network, without any significant negative effect or traffic-overhead. Swarming will: make low bandwith user become a valueable resource + spread often requested files + balance load + less "busy" servants (more available files + higher bandwith).

Greets, Moak

You didn't read my proposal very well.
What I proposed is quite well cheat proof AND not unfair for modem users.
Here's why I think so:

It is cheat proof because this 'GI' is not measured by how many or which files are in your shared folder, but how many bytes you actually _did_ upload during the last 48 hours, divided through the number of bytes you did download. Thus you can impossibly increase your GI without contributing to the network. (Okay, there's still the possibility of manipulating your node's source code - but I don't think a significant amount of users will do so.)

It is not unfair to modem users because of the way this GI is applied. If you read through my proposal carefully (and think a little further), you will see that the trick is to have a GI that is slightly higher than the GIs of those who want to download something from the same host. You do _not _ need a GI which is near to the maximum, it only shouldn't be too far below the average GI on the network.
As the majority of Gnutella users probably have asynchronous connections, this average GI will probably not be more than 30% or so, meaning in order to have a decent chance of getting your desired files, you'd have to upload 30 bytes for every 100 bytes you download. Don't tell me this is too much for modem users!

What I have to admit though, is that all this won't be of much use as long as the majority of clients don't support swarming.

This idea is similar to one posted by someone in another thread.

Either way it is discriminatory: I share 2GB of files, most of them obscure classic pieces by Ligeti, Tallis and Orff. Should my download speed be throttled simply because the files I share are not popular?

As far as I'm concerned, I share - usually 24/7. Although I receive very few upload requests, I know that I share files that the masses are not interested in. Does this however class me as a freeloader, or even a 2nd class citizen?

To say it's not cheat proof is incorrect. I can start two servants and download one from another with no great difficulty.

If such a mechanism were to be put in place, you can bet your life that people would massage the figures very quickly. They choose not to now because there is no reason to, give people a reason though and you'll see why the phrase 'necessity is the mother of invention' is so apt...

Rachel

Generosity Indicator
 

Hi, I like the idea of an indicator how generous/nice you are.... IF this is only an indicator without any restriction for downloading. Freeloaders are not evil, mode users are still not integrated and must not be punished.

I did call this generousity indicator "gnutella karma", which shows a ratio of how much you have downloaded and how much you have given back. Let's imagine there is a chat ability between future clients and you will see the generousity/karma (together with a title from 'A++ superpeer operator' to 'Big sharer' to 'whining milkdrinking freeloader') of your opponent... I guess such an indicator can encourage people to share and build a community.

guido i think your idea would be better off on a propierty network. To implement such an idea it has to be supported by every servent on gnutella which is impossible. Because people will use old servents and theres no guarentee that every developer would add it anyways.

Your idea would be biased towards what you share. What if a user was sharing 2 gigs of polka music and only uploaded 2 songs in a day. Even though they are sharing an enormus amount they wouldnt matter to their rating. On the contrary a user could share one small and popular file like an ebook thats about 800k big upload it a hundred times and get a high rating for sharing just one file.

This is no argument at all here. This is a developer forum where we discuss about gutella's future and ideas. New ideas must be developed and proofed, good ideas will be implemented in future clients.

That is not the mass, the mass are freeloaders. Some rare polka trader can still share famous files (swarming?) or offer a superpeer to help the network. Traders of rare files ar no problem for the network, non-stop downloader without sharing are.

That's perfect. If a trader shares less files but very famous, he is doing a good job to the network!

What ideas do you have to improve gnutella?

Btw. It's certainly been a while since I've seen a modem user connect to my host do download something. - I think most of the modem users would rather use fasttrack, as the traffic of two connection already takes up a considerable part of bandwidth. - I remember the days when I still was a modem user, and how rarely I used gnutella.

FREE LOADERS RULE!

Things that make Gnutella rock:
1) It's free
2) EVERYONE IS TREATED EQUALLY :D

I have been doing this for years. At serveral points, I started with noting. Someone on the network hooked me up, and let me leech off of their server, and in return, I served back to the community.

As with anything social, there are going to be contributers, and non-contributers. I have broadband, so I'll contribute, but if I had precious little bandwith (dial up) I would not contribute... it already takes 20 min a song, and sometimes it quits in the middle of the download!

IMHO freeloaders are okay. If you don't like freeloaders, use the tools that are available to you now, but don't continue to add overhead to the network to a technology that is already top-heavy with ping data (I have ready 50% of the Gnutella overhead is in ping and pongs).

Let 'em freeload, the files you want are probably still available to you (by some courier that doesn't care if you give THEM anything), and remember... all of you started with nothing at some point. What if you were told "sorry... I won't give you any files... you download more than you upload"

Remember the thing that all the Gnutella brags about - everyone on the network is equally important... T3 - 2400 baud

Freeloaders DO NOT rule!
 

Are you serious? :) Free loading is contra productive for all of us... which means less files, less bandwith, less fun. Together with more multidownload clients this could finally KILL GNUTELLA, oops.

Please read this thread.

Q: What is the reason that FastTrack and eDonkey are that fast?
A: They do not allow pure freeloading, you allways share a small part of your bandwith. I'm sorry that Xolox is dead, the _only_ healthy gnutella client, because it does not provide pure freeloading! Did Xolox hurt any modem user... no... anti-freeloading means not punishing anyone, but improve speed/availabitlity and that is one of many reasons why FastTrack/eDonkey is more famous, more modern.

The main goal of Gnutella developer must be IMHO: Stop freeloading in a very fair manner (for example integrate modem users with swarming and a miminum upload bandwith, following the Xolox/eDonkey example) and decrease backbone traffic (e.g with superpeers, which will be a dramatic speed increase for modem users!).

1. Technical speaking there is no way arround stopping freeloading.
2. Speaking not technial, anti-freeloading will result in: modem users will download faster (yeah!), high bandwith user will download faster (yippie!).
Saying this, judge on your own now: Freeloading is cool, freeloading is bad?

Well, I am sharing 5 GB of files, but I haven't had one single upload in a long time. It is not that I'm sharing odd files, they are all mp3s or music videos. Just how fair would it be if I'm stopped from downloading anything just because nobody uploads from me?

Ivan
"In the dark we make a brighter light"

Yep, a good argument against simple Mojos, but as told before there are other ideas against Freeloaders.

"Some rare polka trader can still share famous files (swarming?) or offer a superpeer to help the network. Traders of rare files ar no problem for the network, non-stop downloader without sharing are."

Free Loaders
 

Moak,
I understand your concern for the "good of the network". But the reality is that Gnutella was never, nor should it ever be set up for optimum effiency. Do you really think that all the people on Napster were sharing files? No. There were pleanty of people that free loaded, and Napster ran just fine. Gnutella will run fine. Give people the option... if you don't want to serve free loaders, make sure your servant is set to check for free loaders. But, if I want to serve free loaders, then I should be able to do so. That is the freedom of Gnutella.

I am not trying to pick a fight, I am only stating my opinion.

Hi Aigamisou,
I don't think that Gnutella runs fine. I think there are too many busy servants and I see that FastTrack and eDonkey runs much better.

So do you think it's too much for a modem user sharing a minimum 1-10% of his capacity? Instead just tolerate freeloading and state Gnutella as a 'very open and friendly network'? Yes, I like that idea and I love people with positive idealism. Personally I have nothing aganist people downloading from me 24/7 and it make me happy to see some souls happy. :)

CU later, Moak :)

thumbs down to keeping score
 

the underlying theme here is that there is NO theme for anti-freeloading. everyone's idea is different, which suggests that there is no right way to do it.

the idea of ratings or points fails because there is nothing to build it on. like it or not, the gnutella network was not built on rules. for better or for worse, this p2p network is pretty much unregulated.

on top of that, you're trying to do it cross-client. i'm not saying freeloaders are a good thing, but i think that in trying to create order from chaos, you'll end up hurting the people you are trying to help.

like it or not, the gnutella network is self-regulating. if you freeload, the network runs slower and you have only yourself to blame. if the network becomes swamped with freeloaders, it will suck and they'll have to either share or leave. i dont like the idea that the speed of the network is ultimately controlled by the freeloaders, but i'd much rather have that then share-nazi tactics.

busy gnutella clients
 

Depends on what you're trying to download. I was sharing 200 DivX-Movies for a couple of days and I received 80,000 Upload Requests within 24 hours but within that time I could not upload more than 2 movies.

Now I'm sharing 5,000 mp3s and I'm receiving about 10% of that number in 24 hours, while I can upload roughly 200.

You can see the difference: divx was 40,000reqs to 1ups, mp3 25reqs to 1ups. It's no problem to download mp3s these days, but downloading divX movies from gnutella is really painful (although I've already done so: I downloaded harry potter within 24 hours using mutella)

Freeloaders and modem users were a problem for gnutella just a year ago, but today modem users are becoming rare and people with fast connections who are on the net 24/7 don't have any reason for freeloading. Even if 20% of the gnutella users were freeloaders or modem users (or both) that would not matter so much.

Re: thumbs down to keeping score
 

Such postings make me believe I waste my time in making Gnutella better. Perhaps you want to live in anarchismus, personally I belive most people are too selfish and gnutella is too anonymous and selfish today

Mr. Jones- Modem users have a long way to go before they become rare, so this problem will not just disappear on its own. Modem users represent a much greater percentage than 20% of Gnutella users.

I use a Modem, and you'd be surprised how much a modem user can share if they want to. I have several popular movie soundtracks, and I have upload requests almost constantly. As long as I am not downloading anything myself, I can upload several lmedium-size mp3 files withing an hour. To tell the honest truth, if I were to keep an actual record, there would be more bandwidth used uploading than bandwidth used for downloading. I've got over 3 GBs of stuff, and most of it's popular. Never let it be said that all modem users are freeloaders. Judge people (or <b>nodes</b> for you socially impaired) by their character, not by their class.

John does constantly post this unfounded statement about freeloading. Currently we have a statistics from Oct 2000 [1], which says 70% of Gnutella users share no files. Is any other information available?

[1] Free riding on Gnutella - http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/is...dar/index.html

Oh yes that article. That was written over a year ago and gnutella at the time wasnt in really good shape. I mean some news sites have posted stories about gnutella dieing within a few months. There wasnt as many people using back then and the gnutella servents out at that time werent easy to use.

Its a great piece of gnutella history but about thats it. I dont think it would be wise to make decisions about gnutella today based on a year old report using year old statistics. If someone comes out with a new report then that would be useful and that would be better to base ideas off of.

On anti-freeloading i still dont agree with it. The ideas behind it all want to restrict, place limitations that is not what P2P and file sharing is about. Look at napster they never had any anti-freeloading rectrictions and they had one of the highest sharing rates of all. So increaseing the number of people that share can be done without elborate plans that emphasize restricting users. Also as i said in other posts in this thread i think people will share more when gnutella itself is improved and is more efficent.

Sephiroth

Obsviously, you didn't read any of our posts. We are talking about network improvements, and have in NO way schemed to restrict users.

I was commenting on anti-freeloading in general. Realize that when i say anti-freeloading i mean features that do mean to add restriction or other elborate plans to force users to share. Other more logical ideas i consider performance and uploading features that encourage sharing but doesnt force you.

However ill be more than happy to comment on what was recently posted.

I agree with all the points that you and fist brought up.

The problem is that gnutella hasnt really intregrated modem users very well however with things like supernodes im happy to say thats changing. Since around 2-3 kilobytes which is the average i use are used on just keeping 4 host connections that only leaves about 2-3 kilobytes free to download and upload.

I expect supernodes and swarming to drastically change this.

Im on 56k modem and im sharing about a 1000 files. Mostly low file size files like jpg wallpapers and some midi files.

Thank you for responding again, Sephiroth.
:-)

I do agree that the 'current' statisitics report is outdated. We need an updated statistic report to accurately assess the network's current state and what needs to be done.

How would one go about finding new statistics. Do you think this would be a large unertaking requiring many people's involvement? Could we simply mimic the methods used to obtain the older statistics?

I'm working on new Gnutella statistics.
It's a side project, I let you know as soon I have something. Meanwhile, what makes you think freeloading has changed or has become less. It could be even worse. Sephiroth, currently we have 1 year old data, okay, but everything else are presumptions based on what? Seeing the high amount of busy slots, still, I wonder what makes you think things have changed to the good?

Do you know alot of statistics? I took a semester of it and you got to have a representative sample using a random method in order for it to do any good. If not then it wont accurately measure the network and you just wasted a whole lotta time. Someone here is allready posted a message saying that they are doing a study on this very thing.

Anyways the network at the time those stats where take wasnt in good shape. For one gnutella wasnt easy to use, the orginal servents were still out there and probably most importantly web sites searches weren't being blocked. Which im assuming that you dont know that it was these gnutella web search engines that were the major freeloaders and not gnutella users themselves.. Im talking about web searches on gnutella that would leech off everyone. There are some gnutella searches out there now and thats different. They only search users who let them and so its completely different than back then.

Now thats all changed the network is at least 5 times bigger than it was at that time, web sites are blocked by a majority of gnutella programs so thats taken care of, .56 are also blocked because they were also hurting the network i think it was becuase it was generating too much traffic, and the gnutella programs of today are a whole helluva lot easier to use than they were back then and that attrachs more users.

You cannot measure freeloading on the amount of busies you get. That is pretty funny.. Why because they have to be sharing for you to download off of to get the busy in the first place haha. The idea that less freeloading will make less busies although seems like it work i believe its a myth. Even on programs that do have excessive anti-freeloading features busy downloads are still common. Theres a big difference between Encourageing sharing and Forcing Sharing. Encouarging sharing is a good idea but forcing sharing is not.

Sepiroth!

What Moak says is simple...

Less freeloading = more files...

more files = higher availbility of the files

higher avaibility of the file = higher chance for a download

Its very simple! Its no myth - its logic!

Morgwen

Sepiroth,
what should I do? Not collecting information about existing statistics projects, not analyze the gnutella protocoll, not helping other people working on statistics project... instead belive in the Bearshare hype and Bearshare will be the big glory? You Bearshare maniacs are really becoming anoying and wasting my time. Eat some sweet Xmas cookies, Hohoho.

Go, Moak - GO! You tell 'em!

:-)

Excuse me are you the same moak you got a personal thank you from the xolox team? And now you want to call other people maniacs for other programs. Please point out where i mentioned bearshare in my last post? I didnt and i think your last post was very uncalled for. I never insulted you.

I only asked a few questions on how your statistics thing is being done. Because like i said i took a stats class and considering the reponse i got im guessing you havent.. So i probably could have helped you out on it. Because if it isnt statistically correct then it wont be any use to people like developers and etc.

Ill tell you what you need to be doing to best benifit gnutella. First would be not to say that just because someone doesnt agree with you is a waste of your time. Second would be to stick to the issue and not stoop to insults when you cant defend your position.

Morwgen the last part of my post addressed that very thing. I say that most people believe in exactly what you posted but i have yet to see it actually work in any p2p program out today even ones with a ton of anti-freeloading features so i think its a myth. Even if you or moak dont agree with it i still dont think that it was appropiate for moak to post insults like that towards me.

Insults???

Perhaps you didn´t post this in the last post... but in many others!

And you are talking about insults here? How do you call what happened with me on bearshare.net? I said only my opinion and Vinnie, you and other trolls started to flame on me... I see a difference between ironic statements and insults!

And be sure if Moak will start to flame on you, I will do something... I am not Vinnie! But I know that he will never do this!

Morgwen

Sephir please stop it.

When you come back with arguments + a friendly voice + and helping other users, then I will be very glad. But just repeating Vinnie's voice is not interesting, really! If you're interested in my statistics investigations, ask friendly. During holidays I don't expect more replies, but in a first step I tried to contact every existing Gnutella statistics projects, Limewire's host count, Gnucleus network mapping, visualisation projects, crawler etc.

Coming back to topic
 

Would it be a good idea to seperate between "encourage sharing" (we had many ideas here) and "forcing sharing" (even if in a very friendly manner)? Would someone like to summarize all mentioned ideas? I thought it could be a good idea to find back to a constructive discussion for everyone...

Happy holidays, Moak

Morwgen i dont want to hear about your problems on bearshare.net that has no relevence here. Thats how it happened to you but thats not how it appears to many others. You went on a little tyrate based on 100% of heresay which you cannot back up and prove at all.

Me stop it, moak your the one dishing out the insults dont try to blame me for what you started. And yet you continue on insulting me. Get this through yer little head. I am not vinnie. I guess its easier for you to just call me a troll and drone for vinnie than it is to respond to my arguement which you have still failed to do. Im not the one starting crap by calling people troll and drones here so im not the one who needs to stop it.

You say you want to have constructive discussions and yet you roll out the troll insults whever someone says something you dont agree with. Just because i dont post what you want to hear or you dont understand doesnt mean that its has no worth, and it sure doesnt give you the right to start insulting me.

Why has Moak no right to insult you? Most of the statements you post are crap... and he don´t flame... so where is your problem?

The only statement I ever hear from this don´t work - so tell us why it don´t work and make some "constructive" suggestions...

Moak is working hard on Gnutella... he is a very good developer - yes I know you had a semester statisitcs! :rolleyes:

And yes you are a troll! Mr. I know all better!

Morgwen

Moaks's list of Anti-freeloading features on Gnutella

Here is a list of collected ideas and features, anything missed?

A Anti-Freeloading features, allready established in common servants:
* Block downloads from web browsers (and web search interfaces)
* Remind user to stay online before quiting, when ppl still download

B Freeloader-friendly Anti-freeloading approaches:
* Chat between clients (community feature)
* Specialized horizons (community feature)
* Showing a Gnutella Karma or Generosity Indicator
* Encourage cooperative beaviour (splash screen, online help, teach sharing etc)

C Freeloader-friendly Anti-freeloading approaches + force sharing:
* Swarming with tiny minimum bandwith (especially for modem users)
* Minimum upload bandwith (as eDonkey/Xolox does, calculated from download)
* Minimum upload bandwith with more AI (detecting user/bandwith idle and then share with much higher bandwith)
* Prevent zero upload slots (together with minnimum upload bandwith)
* Automatically share download folder
* Develop/Implement new technical features for better bandwith use (superpeers, hashs etc)

D Freeloader-unfriendly Anti-freeloading approaches:
* Block anyone sharing less files from connecting/downloading
* Mojos or upload/download ratios
* Run Gnutella as a background service and share automatically when online.

E Unrecommended/Stupid Anti-freeloading approaches (Klingon style):
* Block all low bandwith users, share only with cable/DSL/highspeed users
* Flood and kick remaining freeloaders with distributed DoS
* Let freeloader connect, but don't send/route search results targeted to them (drive them crazy)
* A TTL1/TTL2 crawler which hunts freeloaders and automatically launches aggresive countermeasures
* Be selfish too and stop sharing files

"Make Gnutella a better place, for you and for me" (Michael Jackson, very free interpretation)

Hi!
"Cooperation can flourish if the public-spirited majority can punish freeloaders, say Swiss economists. People will pay to punish - suggesting that their notions of fairness outweigh selfish considerations. The work may help explain why people cooperate in society." tells a new Nature article:

http://www.nature.com/nsu/020107/020107-6.html
"Prosperity through punishment"

PS: Funny. Personally I do not like punishment, but giving gnutella members a feeling of "we do not tolerate freeloading" and "punish" them with friendly anti-freeloading countermeassures" (force swarming) and more control (chat/showing generosity) could also improve cooperative behaviour = better sharing. It's an emotional aspect, the article above could improve our understaning of human cooperative behaviour.

PPS: Also a Slashdot and infoAnarchy article now, see:
http://slashdot.org/science/02/01/10/0324223.shtml
http://www.infoanarchy.org/?op=displ.../11/02517/7790

maybe....
 

How can you tell if someone is a freeloader when they start downloading? You can't right now.

Personally I would simply like a few extra http headers, and without those a download will not occur.

eg:

Hosts: 8/10
Leafs: 0
Shared-Files: 1440302342/435

Shared-Files is usually the only thing one might wnat to check.. the rest would just be nice for ultrapeer **** :P This would then tell a host whether or not somebody is a freeloader. If all clients keep this _right_, then one can simply reply when one is considered a freeloader:

HTTP <error> Freeloaders aren't allowed to download

or whatever... Thoughts?

That could be faked

Add to the protocol data about:

* number of files shared
* number of bytes shared
* ratio of downloaded/uploaded bytes (lifetime)
* highest possible upload speed
* current minimum upload speed guaranteed

Another method used by some p2p programs:
Ask the user if you may automaticly search for media files, and then share folders with a lot of mp3, avi, etc. files. Most users will just hit yes.

stop being nazi and fix what's already stopping people downloading
 

OK, stop being control-freak nazis.

There are many things which already make gnutella a problem Lack of files is not one of them.

There are enough files.

The problem is it is too hard to find the ones you want ..

Fix this by:

1. Support reporting of bitrate, song length etc
2. Allow limiting searches based on 1 (to reduce unnecessary network traffic)

3. Prevent reporting of shared files whenever there are no upload slots
(this is currently a BIG problem I think with limeware - because in the current version if you set upload slots to 1 it is in fact read by limeware as 0!!)

4. hashes. Not swarming, which sounds very difficult to implement. If you want swarming, go to freenet ;-) I would not use a swarming client because I am on a modem connection and i only want to spend bandwidth on files I want. I share heaps, I don't want some nazi making me share stuff I couldn't care less about.

Hashes will make it so much easier to get a download to finish, because you will be able to continue a download easily from another source. Clients will be able to automatically search for alternate sources and pick up a faster/more reliable one.

5. Hashes enable what I would call swarming: ie client with enough bandwidth downloading from multiple sources different parts of the file. Implement this instead.

6. Clients should allow user to prevent uploads to freeloaders .. either based on number of files shared, or based on the existing 'did upload' or whatever. But it should definitely be optional and at the user's discretion. But don't go overboard and implement any new stuff in the protocol to achieve this. Make use of what you've got.

7. Remind users when there are still people dling if they go to shut down their client.

8. Make clients which consist of a daemon and a front-end, with the daemon always running (and sharing) - but ask the users before setting it up like that, because that can really annoy some poeple (like sysadmins).

9. Genorosity indicators suck. I don't want to be labelled as a freeloader if I'm not one. Like other people here, I share heaps, currently > 13 G, but I am on a modem so not many uploads very often. But 11G of my stuff is 'original' (ie I ripped it myself, not downloaded from gnutella). As any genuine gnutella user will tell youi, it is the hard-to-find stuff that is most valuable, not the stuff that every man and his dog has downloaded and deleted a million times.

He he - the people who will get the best generosity marks if you implement it will be those suckas with the gnutella virus! How funny - they would be treated like gods in your 'community' because they have little virus protection and less brains.

** End of list

Really the worst thing about gnutella is finding files, downloading 90% of them, then sucka at other end cuts you off and you never find that source again. Fix those issues FIRST. Then you can make it into a game, but I won't play, thanks. If I want to play a game I'll visit my broadband friends and play counterstrike. It's more satisfying.

Oh, yeah, and as a modem user I am tired of seeing this hype that ultrapeers will save me so much bandwidth.

My download bandwidth is never a problem - I will get 4-5 k a sec from a good source, most sources (even 'fast' ones) don't run more than 2-3 k/s. Limewire does use less bandwidth for connections, but I don't think it it helps the downloads. Anyway, the point is, with 5k/s available, and two sources running at 2k/s, that still leaves 1k/s for connections, which is plenty, given that the download is gonna take like 1/2hr to 1hr. I get plenty of search results over that time, and can happily upload and download at the same time. Really, stop it with the 'ultrapeers will give modem users so much more bandwidth. It's not like they're gonna come around here and plug me into cable, you know?

I think up's are great for increasing search results, but that's the primary benefit. Not bandwidth for modem users.

forgot this ...
 

oh yeah, number 3. needs to also not say there are shared files if it is patently obvious that the client is unable to successfully upload.

This will require some extra protocol work, I think, to really get it going, or something (I don't know enough!) but basically, there should be a query 'please test my upload ability'

Send that query to another client and the client requests some file from you (doesn't have to be a real file, could be some special filename like 'gnutellatestYYYYMMDDHHMMSS' that you told it you had, but actually you produce the test data automatically)

If you try a given number of clients (say 10) which say they support this protocol, and you don't even upload 10 k to them, then you don't go telling the whole world about your 5Tb of unique mp3s (which no one can successfully get because your sysadmin long ago blocked all incoming queries).