[tahoe-dev] Node correlations - [Was] best practice for wanting to setup multiple tahoe instances on a single node

[Olaf TNSB]

My thought around using introducers was in part to address a use case of
Zooko's suggestion...but as always it might just be my intended use case...

If we are using a local copy of the trusted nodes then it's like we're back
in the good ol' days of maintaining hosts files.

I like the idea (don't get me wrong) but I can envisage setting up an
introducer at location #1 (say, my house) and one at location #2 (different
country perhaps) and also joining a pubgrid. The introducers I control can
have some setup only allowing trusted nodes to connect.

I can then say I treat *my* introducers differently than the pubgrid
without needing to know all nodes connected.

I *think* a generic descriptor is what's needed. Some grids might want
geocoding, some might want to trust at a introducer level, some might want
something else.  I guess the issue then becomes how does a user build a
ruleset for their use case? Is JSON & some scripting language (GNU Guile?)
the answer, or is it over engineering?

Cheers,

Olaf
 On 17/01/2012 7:53 AM, "Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn" <zooko at zooko.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 12:47 PM, Greg Troxel <gdt at ir.bbn.com> wrote:
> >
> > I'd say write up a plan and send it to the list.
>
> Yay!
>
> > 1) Decide if we are going to trust storage nodes to express the
> variables that are correlated honestly.  I think it's at least near
> impossible not to trust them and make progress.
>
> You could have a text file containing each storage server's furl and
> its properties in some flat textual format, and put that into your
> gateway's node directory (~/.tahoe). Then that gateway would believe
> the contents of that file when choosing which shares to upload to
> which servers.
>
> As a bonus, this automatically solves the Sybil Attack, in which
> someone sets up a large number of storage servers so that by chance
> your gateway uses only all or mostly storage servers controlled by
> them. Having a locally-controlled file describing storage servers
> means that the gateway could have a requirement like "make sure at
> least K servers that I upload to appear on this list".
>
> Therefore, I don't think there is any need for the gateway to receive
> a description about a storage server directly from that storage server
> and then rely on that description. At least as a first cut, it would
> seem better to rely on the gateway's system administrator for that.
>
> (I'm sure this will turn out to be inadequate for some uses, but it
> seems like a good starting point.)
>
> Regards,
>
> Zooko
>
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