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Yes, I believe it does. Actually, let me qualify that comment, I should say that it effectively does. As Dan notes, BitTorrent, for example, is considered to b
by itistoday2 13y ago
Yes, I believe it does.
Actually, let me qualify that comment, I should say that it effectively does. As Dan notes, BitTorrent, for example, is considered to be a decentralized protocol, but it does have some centralized components "for a reason".
IMO, in practice, this is inconsequential, because those centralized components aren't critical pieces, and they are fully "hot swappable". Any one of those bootstrap servers can go down, and they can be easily replaced. They don't really hold any valuable information themselves, they're just entry points into a distributed network.
- dvanduzer 13y agoI'm glad you brought that line in the 2011 piece up, because it caught my eye too. I am not sure it's clear whether Kaminsky was talking about peer introduction or content discovery, though. Regardless, this gets down to the crux of the "squared triangle" issue. Getting introduced to the network isn't the only place where centralization helps, and it's probably not even an important one, as you say. A human that wants to get on the BitTorrent network just finds a client binary. There isn't a need at any point to type bit torrent dot com into a browser. Arguably, the human-oriented / memorable leg of the triangle can't be solved globally. Here's some really good thinking on the subject: http://stpeter.im/journal/1035.html http://stpeter.im/journal/1035.html