From: p2p-hackers@zgp.org (Justin Chapweske)
Date: Mon Jul 15 18:40:02 2002
Subject: [p2p-hackers] Everything as a file in p2p

Glenn McGrath wrote:
> Everything as a file is a mantra of the unix world. Everything as a file
> doesnt mean everything is a file, its more like everything has a file
> handle. For this to be true, the file handle must be independent of the
> content that it processes.
> 
> I think the Content Addressable Web (namespace based on content hash)
> approach used by many systems hinders efforts to see everything as a file
> becasue the file handle is derived from the hash of the content. It makes
> every file read-only, if a file is modified it becomes a completely new
> entry (sometimes this is wanted).

The "Content Addressable Web" is a subset, or optimization of generic 
web architecture.   It should really only be used in the context of 
generic web architecture, where everything is a URI-addressable web 
object.  Indeed, it would be hard to write an application that supports 
only CAW, without supporting the the whole of URIs and web architecture, 
so in practice I don't that anything is hindered in its expressiveness.

> 
> If we abstracting the transport layer from our p2p systems in a generic
> way then individual p2p systems can implement there different
> search/retrieval system ontop of that, you could have a CAW system ontop
> of the generic transport layer, maping the hash based filename to an
> independent file handle.
>  
> The trasport layer would need properties such as content independence,
> security, (limited?) anonymity, accountability, intelligent routing...
> other ?
> 

That generic transport layer already exists, its called HTTP.   Add 
SSL/TLS for security, a mix network of HTTP proxies for anonymity, and a 
content delivery network for intelligent routing.

Personally, I think the concept of a P2P transport layer is as vacuous 
as talking about a "P2P operating system". 

-- 
Justin Chapweske, Onion Networks
http://onionnetworks.com/