tahoe-lafs/docs/historical/peer-selection.txt

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When a file is uploaded, the encoded shares are sent to other peers. But to
which ones? Likewise, when we want to download a file, which peers should we
ask for shares? The "peer selection" algorithm is used to make these choices.
During the first tahoe meeting, (actualy on the drive back home), we designed
the now-abandoned "tahoe1" algorithm, which involved a "cabal" for each file,
where the peers involved would check up on each other to make sure the data
was still available. The big limitation was the expense of tracking which
nodes were parts of which cabals.
Formerly (until v0.6, ticket #132), we used the "tahoe3" algorithm (see
peer-selection-tahoe3.txt), but now we use the "tahoe2" algorithm (see the
PEER SELECTION section of docs/architecture.txt), which uses a permuted
peerid list and packs the shares into the first 10 or so members of this
list. (It is named "tahoe2" because it was designed before "tahoe3" was.)
In the future, we might move to an algorithm known as "denver airport", which
uses Chord-like routing to minimize the number of active connections.
Different peer selection algorithms result in different properties:
* how well do we handle nodes leaving or joining the mesh (differences in the
peer list)?
* how many connections do we need to keep open?
* how many nodes must we speak to when uploading a file?
* if a file is unrecoverable, how long will it take for us to discover this
fact?
* how expensive is a file-checking operation?
* how well can we accomodate changes to encoding parameters?