NULL mag Issue 09 11 Gnutella bbs
do you remember gnutella? do you know gnutella? limewire? napster? etc? well you can read about it here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnutella
gnutella was the father of p2p apps in general and it did a very good job, in doing so. for sure you all know about p2p protocols and programs and the only reason i am mentioning gnutella, is because it begun as a project of hobbyists and it did a breakthrough... so, what more appropriate to make a similar breakthrough into the bbs world :)
the idea is to make a p2p bbs network. right now, echonets are based on a main server bbs and the rest bbses are the clients. if the main server bbs is down, then the echonet is down and no one can connect to it and exchange messages. what if we used a p2p protocol to make echonets act the same as other p2p apps, like gnutella.
this way if a bbs is down, the whole echonet will not be down and the other bbses could still continue to share messages. when a/the bbs is back online, it can receive any new messages, it has lost.
i think that this, would be possible with not much work, as the echonet technology all ready in use, uses packets and the bbses are only getting newer posted messages. the only thing that will have to change is the connection, which will have to be not to just one bbs, but to multiple and share msgs/packets.
the gnutella protocol, also uses a semi-p2p or semi-main-server type of connections. it divides the nodes to simple clients and nodes that can act more as a main server. you may have to read the protocol to understand it fully, but the main idea is that instead of all nodes to be simple nodes, some of them are super-nodes and by doing so, the other nodes, don't have to make too many connections with each other. if a super-node goes down, another simple-node, will take in charge and so on.
i am not the right guy to either describe or guide on how to do so, in a project like this, but i thought that as an idea, it would be interesting to implement it in the bbs scene. hope, someone with the right knowledge will do so...
