ADC support for "tracker"

Technical discussion about the NMDC and <a href="http://dcpp.net/ADC.html">ADC</A> protocol. The NMDC protocol is documented in the <a href="http://dcpp.net/wiki/">Wiki</a>, so feel free to refer to it.

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fluke
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Joined: 2006-12-06 13:25

ADC support for "tracker"

Post by fluke » 2006-12-06 16:52

One of the advantages to BitTorrent is a central authority called a tracker keeps a record of the amount of bandwidth each client is contributing to uploads. Automating similar enforcement policies under the DC protocol has been impossible since the so little information is automatically provided back to the hub. For the most part, the NMDC client could have just as easily been built around using an IRC server. The only real improvement NMDC has is a reverse client-to-client connect which could easily fixed by creating a Reverse-DCC extention to IRC.

I would like to see ADC have an optional feature set which corrects this issue. Currently, a hub can only log is who is attempting to can to whom (and a DC++ client tag which works on the honor system). It knows nothing about if the connection is successful, what people are downloading and how much bandwidth/slots each user is really sharing. Hence, for a hub admin to find people cheating the rules of a hub requires manually talking to the hub's users to get the information.

Not only should a hub be able to collect information on data rates from users, but the hub should then be able to recommend to the clients to apply upload rate limits against specific users.

Provided the clients on a hub honors the "tracker" feature, the hub administrator should be able to easy answer the following questions about his community:

- What is the most popular downloaded file?
- What percentage of connection attempts to a user where successful?
- What was the maxium number of concurrent upload connections an user provided?
- What was the average upload rate from a user?
- What is the total number of bytes uploaded by a user?

Flow84
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Joined: 2004-11-08 17:59

Post by Flow84 » 2006-12-06 19:03

<irony>
Wow!!!..

you are sooo smart...
</irony>
i mean... if you exclude the huge amount of data this will mean....

this can do so hub owners can be hold responsible for what users are sharing in some countries...

this mean you will have to have a huge mechanism that checks so no one is sharing something that *he shouldn't...

GargoyleMT
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Re: ADC support for "tracker"

Post by GargoyleMT » 2006-12-06 19:40

fluke wrote:Provided the clients on a hub honors the "tracker" feature, the hub administrator should be able to easy answer the following questions about his community:
Hubs are meeting places. They're not entitled to the information you're asking they be given.

Todi
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Post by Todi » 2006-12-07 02:50

I hope you are aware of how easy it is to fake the information going to the tracker in order to make it seem like you are doing things you really are not, such as uploading a lot.

ivulfusbar
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Post by ivulfusbar » 2006-12-07 03:43

read the thread http://www.dcpp.net/forum/viewtopic.php ... ght=rating

I suggest you search before trying to start something discussed years ago.
Everyone is supposed to download from the hubs, - I don´t know why, but I never do anymore.

fluke
Posts: 3
Joined: 2006-12-06 13:25

Post by fluke » 2006-12-07 16:08

Todi: I agree with you that faking out a tracker is possible (even easy). However, with DC++ tags, only one client needs to lie. With a tracker, at least two clients need to agree to lie. The point is to provide a system to help hub administrator *encourage* following the hub rules, not to provide gaureentee enforcement.

Flow84: Thanks for claiming that I am smart but that really contributed nothing to the conversation. What I am recommending is an *optional* (not required) feature which can be RM/AD during the protocol stage. Hub administrators that are consern about legal and/or privacy conserns definately should not include use of a tracker with their hub. But ADC probably should not be used at all in those situations due to the inclusion of the "RES" command in the protocol. You might want to consider looking into using FreeNet in your case.

GargoyleMT: If hubs are nothing more than meeting places then creating ADC is just a meaningless effort in re-inventing something that IRC and Jabber already address. The inclusion of the DC++ description tag seems to suggest that there are people that feel there is additional information that should be provided beyond a common meeting place profile. When I registered with the DC++ discussion forum, phpBB didn't ask me for how many slots I have open. Yet, that information is provided by the DC++ client to a hub. While I respect your opinion, I do not believe it is shared by the DC community as a whole.

ivulfusbar: Thanks for pointing that out. Most forums I have been on use a "Sticky" post which state in the rules if there are subjects that should never be re-iterated. The thread you point out does not show up in a search for "BitTorrent" or for "tracker" and you might notice that my post never used the word "rating." While I agree that the "rating" thread touch on several of the same points I brought up, I don't agree that automatically means that the terms I would have put into a search at the time would have ever turned up the thread. It is also rare that I run into forums that expect newbies to be aware of posts going back over a year ago (or in this case stated over 3 years ago and ended over 2 years ago). After going through the thread, it does not seems like the previous discussion ever reached a finalized conclusion one way or another.

ivulfusbar
Posts: 506
Joined: 2003-01-03 07:33

Post by ivulfusbar » 2006-12-07 17:47

I haven't claimed that it can't be addressed again, i only point you towards the obvious thread from which your discussion can start since it will explain the thoughts on a a subject which intersects with your question/statement.

A simple search for "collect information" for example would have pointed you to that thread.
Everyone is supposed to download from the hubs, - I don´t know why, but I never do anymore.

FarCry
Programmer
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Post by FarCry » 2006-12-07 21:03

I think this is worth a discussion again with ADCS enabling fairly reliable identity verification. There is already a strong incentive to introduce another type of service into the network: a separate entity to verify your PID and sign certificates, to simplify SSL (or actually make it usable) and remove the need to trust every hub with your PID. I think that would be the right place to also put that "tracker" functionality into. The information would then be accessible across hub boundaries by clients and also hubs (to a configurable degree). It is after all the client that is mostly interested in fair sharing and not the hub. The latter is only used to try to enforce it in lack of better alternatives.

GargoyleMT
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Post by GargoyleMT » 2006-12-11 19:11

fluke wrote:While I respect your opinion, I do not believe it is shared by the DC community as a whole.
I consider what I download to be a private matter between me and the person who I'm downloading from. I think even anonymous or aggregate statistics are too sensitive for hubs to have.

In certain communities, this might make sense to implement in a DC++ derivative. However, I (hope) that most DC users have a sense of privacy and want to protect information about their downloading habits.

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