Is FastTrack as decentralized as they claim?

[napho]

This guy says no.


Mark Ishikawa is CEO of BayTSP, an Internet security firm 'specializing in the tracking and reporting of stolen content on the Internet'. He has conducted research into how kazaa/FastTrack works. The research has found some damning evidence of some control that those involved with FastTrack have over the P2P network.

According to an AP article Mark Ishikawa has found that Kazaa software shows signs of "calling home" when it cannot find a supernode, or a regional directory running off users' computers. Mark traced these requests to a server on the Caribbean island of Nevis. On further investigation he found that the server was operated by a computing data centre. Despite his efforts the laws of Nevis prevented him from finding out the owner of the server. The server MIGHT be owned by Joltid who own the FastTrack protocol.

This backs up older RIAA research into FastTrack which found that FastTrack applications come loaded with a large list of IP addresses for supernodes. However if the list is somehow corrupted, the application causes the peer to contact another server controlled by KaZaA. Kazaa at the time of this RIAA research was owned by the same people who now own Joltid.

Significantly this does not 100% prove that any of the companies linked to FastTrack have complete control over the network. However it seems to indicate the form of control that those connected to FastTrack have is related to knowing the location of supernodes and the ability to alter them.

The 26 entertainment companies who are suing those connected with FastTrack also state that the removal of Morpheus from FastTrack demonstrates central control. Those who now own Joltid removed Morpheus from the network for unpaid bills. It is widely believed that they removed Morpheus from the network by altering the way supernodes communicate.

Mark Ishikawa may be called to testify in the FastTrack lawsuit.

[JackSpratts]

'does fasttrack have some sort of centralised service?' has been the million dollar question since the days when napster was ordered to police their users.

two questions really: is there centralised "help" and can the system operate without it?

some say no and yes.

the real answers i believe are yes and probably yes.

i have little doubt the court will order ft closed unless it can remove copyrighted material,

so we shall see and fairly soon just what is what.

- js.

[theknife]

Originally posted by JackSpratts
i have little doubt the court will order ft closed unless it can remove copyrighted material

.

so, even if there is some sort of centralized control, assuming it is not based in the US, how can a US court enforce an order to shut it down? us authorities do not have the reach to stop most of the world's illegal banking activity that originates from the Carribean and the Bahamas - why would their arms be long enough to shut down an outlawed file-trading server?

agreed that the courts will most likely declare Fast Track illegal - but what can they actually do about it?

[JackSpratts]

enjoin the hosts.

remember the asian movie site? that was blocked from the us the same way.

- js.

[pod]

OK, so FT will contact a specific server(s) when it has no supernodes. It would be interesting to know what would happen if THOSE servers were unavailable as well. Would it start a random search of IPs? I guess that would work for FT, but any protocols that use variable or random ports that would be impossible.

[napho]

I've noticed some unusual characteristics by Kazaa++ for the last day or so. It's not as consistently fast and people who have installed the latest version say they've gone from 100k/sec down to 2. I doubt it's the new version because i haven't changed a thing and still something is happening. Maybe the powers that be are playing around with the prospect of less centralized control.

[TankGirl]

As a network architecture FastTrack is certainly not very centralized and even less localized but everything we have seen so far suggests that the developers have a good 'remote control' over it. And that is really the only logical choice if they want to make any kind of business with the network. You can't negotiate commercially about something that you don't have control over.

Originally posted by napho
I've noticed some unusual characteristics by Kazaa++ for the last day or so. It's not as consistently fast and people who have installed the latest version say they've gone from 100k/sec down to 2. I doubt it's the new version because i haven't changed a thing and still something is happening. Maybe the powers that be are playing around with the prospect of less centralized control.

You might be onto something here, Napho. It's quite possible that some dedicated servers have been used to 'trim up' the connectivity of the network and now they are testing how it all holds together without the servers. This is just speculation of course.

Anyway, I am sure that the FastTrack developers are smart enough to make the network work without any support servers if they need to. The issue of network control is somewhat separate and can be handled even in a fully decentralized environment with in-built crypto locks etc.

- tg

[colinmacc]

Originally posted by napho
I've noticed some unusual characteristics by Kazaa++ for the last day or so. It's not as consistently fast and people who have installed the latest version say they've gone from 100k/sec down to 2. I doubt it's the new version because i haven't changed a thing and still something is happening. Maybe the powers that be are playing around with the prospect of less centralized control.

Surely download and upload speeds directly from one user to another are independent of any sort of server control over the network??

[JackSpratts]

Originally posted by colinmacc
Surely download and upload speeds directly from one user to another are independent of any sort of server control over the network??

if the client shifts more responsibities to the user then transfer speeds could drop when the percentage of bandwidth used for nodes increases. this happened with winmx too.

- js.