Has anyone addressed the possibility of a fracture in the Gnutella network? I am writing a peer-to-peer client system and I have to address this question. In any situation where you have only a certain number of connections, you run the possibilitiy of the network fracturing into two or more different networks, independent of each other's existence. Are there safeguards in the system to ensure that this doesn't happen?

[Has anyone addressed the possibility of a fracture in the Gnutella network? In any situation where you have only a certain number of connections, you run the possibilitiy of the network fracturing into two or more different networks, independent of each other's existence. Are there safeguards in the system to ensure that this doesn't happen?]

No, there are no safeguards, and the fractionating is already a problem, for it is truly possible to be 'imprisoned' into a small subnet.
Fortunately, since 'ip-servers' are common, this issue was partially mended. In my experience every 20th or 30th log in I get trapped in some kind of small subnets. This is difficult to notice, though - but if your horizon will not rise over, say, 500 and you (using common searches) are getting much less hits than usual it is probable you are 'trapped'.

Greetings...

Simply contacting a hostcache should supply you with contacts to nodes in other "fragments". Your node could then serve to bridge the two segments together, allowing for their eventual fusion

a pretty similar question: in some cases, being "trapped" in a subnet might be more of a feature than a flaw. is it possible to extend the gnutella protocol to allow authentication and thus build a "private" segment and prevent others from joining?

this is not a purely technical question (of course it is in some way or the other _possible_) - it's rather a question of wether it is desirable or not in the community sense.

Yes it is possible to create a private network, even password protected.
Read my post
http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showth...&threadid=3055