It's weird, the way some people can connect and others can't. I noticed the first time I logged on I couldn't connect to pod even though I had his key and IP address. I had to connect to Jack's IP because I knew that he had my key. But now every time I log in I connect to pod's computer first, within a second or two of starting the program.
It must be in the way keys are propagated throught the network. A person on the net could import an other person's key, but that key will not be propagated until that person logs in. If you give your key to one person but try to connect to an other person you won't be able to. In our case, even though Jack is acting spokesman of the network, you'd have to give your key to pod before you try to connect to him. Or else Jack would have to publish his IP number and stay connected all the time.
What this program needs is the ability to assign one computer to act as a keyserver, and any time someone imports a new key then that key would be sent directly to the keyserver so it could accept incomming connections from the new user. Though I imagine this would make the network more vulnurable to intrusion: there would be a publicly known, non-firewalled portal that could be hacked, DoSed, or otherwise shut down. The network would still remain if that node was disconnected, but it would not grow very quickly unless a new keyserver was assigned.
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