New Servant Identifier

Can someone please let me know, how a gnutella client obtains its servant identifier? Is it randomely generated or is it some hash function of its ip?

It's random.

If it's randomly generated then what stops a peer from stealing the servent_id of another from?

Gnutella Protocol Development

Nothing stops you from that, but it doesn't gain you that much either.

You might be able to steal push messages intended for a leaf connected to the same UP, but that doesn't do much damage.

Gnutella worked quite well, when some clients had far too weak servent IDs, so it shouldn't be too much of an issue. And if it becomes an issue, I can already think of some solutions (like the UP informaing the leafs that they have the same servent id and they switching due to that).

If you're writing your own client, it MUST be completely random, though. And the random function should return good randomness (you need only calculate this once).

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thanx a lot.. i guess that solved my problem

Glad to hear that!

Besides: The new Gnutella specification is available at GDF - LimeWire (that's a relay subdomain, so the specs can change the place and still stay accessible from that domain).

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Erst im Spiel lebt der Mensch.
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