I basically agree with
assorted, but using DNS is not going to work IMO.
Quote:
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If there even was any question, the safest way to do it legally would be to get a 3rd party company to provide the service of connecting username to ip addy.
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The problem here is that you're relying completely on a third party with
centralised servers!
It might not be illegal for them to provide "connectivity", but they are open to intimidation, bankruptcy etc. How do you guarantee that the decentralised networks remain in the people's hands if you're dependant on a centralised, beauracratic despot?
The solution is that you don't! There has to be a simple way to guarantee connectivity, even if it's only by using distributed host caches. Limewire uses these, which means that they now cannot be shutdown, even if all the Limewire, Bearshare etc. caches are forced offline!
Guaranteeing identity in a decentralised environment is another difficult challenge, especially if there are no centralised authorities (login servers, irc or similar chat). Keeping logs of ip-addresses is impractical and useless if you want to guarantee that "some address" is the same as "some peer" you interacted with previously. A dynamic DNS solution is a good idea, but the other problems with it are that it's too static for the purposes of a dynamic p2p network (DNS takes about 2 days to fully refresh) and it also requires that a user register & install a third-party utility. It shouldn't be that complicated for the user!
The problem with today's networks is their non-compromising nature. Direct Connect, eDonkey & even Open-Nap for example have good content availability because the networks are generally user-controlled. You can create your own hub or server to cater to a particular niche. The problem is that this is done in a relatively centralised fashion, even though the networks are very dynamic. On the other hand, the more distributed systems like Gnutella & FastTrack leave little room for social, content-relevant groupings. There may be lots of content, but you can't be guaranteed that you'll even see it, let alone obtain it.
The solution in my mind is to create a large, completely decentralised network on the backbone of community or thematic groupings (which can generally be assumed to be similar.) It's far better to be connected to 50 people who have everything you could possibly be interested in, than to a million who only share naked Brittany pics.
It would be ideal to be connected to millions, but this is only necessary if you have
extremely broad interests. This class of individuals shouldn't be alienated however : some might consider an mp3-only sharer to belong to a broader category, while others may not, depending on the actual specifics of the content involved.
So to sum up, I believe that
relevant connectivity & visibility are more important factors than the
number of arbitrary peers that you're connected to.