Updated itsDargens Website

The www.itsDargens.com website has been updated.

Please report any bugs - thanks.

A further cosmetic update is due within the next week.

The priority for work from now on will be the development of an improved ANts p2p.

New Version of ANts p2p Being Worked On

What is currently being done.

I am developing a better version of ANts p2p.

However, I have the following issues:

• I have zero testers - not a problem now but will stop development of improved client as work continues.
• The content layer (www.itsDargens.com) has no users - this is a problem as means can't test website. The reason for content layer is to make ANts P2P more user friendly and cure two issues:
• As network gets bigger download speed slows to zero. The reason for the slowing is that peers join the network randomly. So you get very long difficult to find paths. Solved by allowing users to join network (via content layer) near to content they are interested. Still one big network as one peer (user) can be in more than one (meetup/swarm/network). Jon Kleinberg has proved mathematically that it works. Downside some loss of anonymity for public meetups(swarms/networks) but upside is bigger total networks leading to more anonymity.
• Most users just want to get content - research suggest that nearly 100% of content on p2p networks comes from 7% of users. So content layer caters for those 93% of users by making it apparent what content is available (only interests are listed not files for legal reasons).
• I have taught myself both Ruby on Rails (I now use this at work on a daily basis) and Java. I also have a developer in China, Vicent, who is a student and working on the project in return for minimal expenses (not much money**) and kudos. However, I need more developers helping. If I can teach myself to code so can others! The situation is not helped by the lack of source code and DOCUMENTATION.
• I work full time for a charity and have very little money or time so the project is moving at a snails pace. I need more help.

CAN YOU HELP?

**I pay Vicent as he is in China and even a Dollar in China is big money. It is OK for us in the rich west to demand that people volunteer to work on open source project for free but we have got everything we are RICH. In the developing world to ask someone to work for free would be exploitation. The money that I pay Vicent gives him some hope for the future, covers his expenses and shows that I understand the difficulties he has in China.

He also gains by developing an understanding of the West. For example although he can speak English (China is on the way to becoming the biggest English speaking country in the world) he had no idea what Christmas really was (and I did not understand the true significance of Chinese New Year). So we are both learning.

kerjodando Faster Anonymous P2P?

Below are some questions on answers form an elite Ants p2p user:


Hi, I tried the mod so now I have a better idea of how it works... some questions:

-it seems faster: why ?

Faster due to three things:

• Network is smaller as there are fewer users - so less bandwidth is used
  
• User are more likely to be nearer to content they want to download so shorter path length and more efficient searches - so less bandwidth used
• Currently only elite users have tried it - these users tend to have higher speed connections - so more bandwidth available.

-I see a list of trusted peers: from where they come and do I connect ONLY to them?

The list of trusted peers are at the heart of the system.

You only connect DIRECTLY to who you want to connect DIRECTLY to. For a public meetup like the current test meetup (swarm) anyone who clicks on the start link gets their ip added to the trusted peers for that meetup (swarm) link.

They will only directly connect to those ip addresses.

As each user can connect to two meetups (swarms) - users bridge meetups (swarms) so making a large network.

You can download from ANY user on this network.

-I can't add a trusted peer: true?

No not via the client.

If you want to only connect to certain people you need to set up a PRIVATE meetup (swarm) and only tell those who you want to connect to about it.

-I can't see files from outside my small network: true?

FALSE, the small networks are connect by users who are connected to more than one meetup (swarm).

To connect to more than one meetup (swarm) you need to register, then login. You then bookmark the swarms you want to connect to. Then go to the bookmark page, select two swarms and then launch the modded ants p2p (kerjodando) client.

How to Make Ants P2P Scalable (Bigger)

Often Ants users have said, "It would be nice to have the option to be able to connect to both the general ants and your variation simultaneously. This way we don't dilute the ants between two separate networks."

I agree that it would be nice to connect to the general Ants network and the "Ants network Mod" at the same time.

However, this would defeat to objective which is to make it possible for ANts to have networks bigger than 60.

When 60 users connect together in ANts, the average path lengths become very long and so uploads and downloads grind to a HALT.

Jon Kleinberg has proved why this happens. It is due to the fact that although large random networks have very short path lengths they CANNOT be navigated (one user cannot find a path to a next user).

Jon Kleinberg has also proved that small world networks have short path lengths and ALSO can be navigated.

So if ANts was a small world network rather than a random network it would scale beyond 60.

So how do you make a small world network?

With great difficulty except for the fact that humans generally form small world networks in their social interactions.

Hence, kerjodando and itsDargens.com, people join ANts network according to their interests or friendships. And as each user can be a member of 2 meetups (swarms) then ONE LARGE NETWORK is formed with short path lengths between most users and long path lengths between a minority of users, a small world network.

Then the ANts network is scalable, it can grow to as big as any other 2nd en network without reducing the upload and download speed of users.

See:

http://kerjodando.blogspot.com/2006/07/only-small-world-p2p-networks-scalable.html

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/nat00.pdf

Saturday, July 01, 2006

Only Small World P2P Network Navigation (Search) Scalable

Only small world networks are scalable i.e. can grow in size without becoming very inefficient.

A small world network, where nodes represent people and edges connect people that know each other, captures the small world phenomenon of strangers being linked by a mutual acquaintance.

The small world phenomenon (also known as the small world effect) is the hypothesis that everyone in the world can be reached through a short chain of social acquaintances. The concept gave rise to the famous phrase six degrees of separation after a 1967 small world experiment by social psychologist Stanley Milgram which suggested that two random US citizens were connected on average by a chain of six acquaintances.

This has far reaching consequences for 'anonymous' P2P file sharing. A leading researcher on small world networks, Jon Kleinberg, states the following:

Moreover, α=2 is the only exponent at which any decentralized algorithm can achieve a delivery time bounded by any polynomial in logN: for every other exponent, an asymptotically much larger delivery time is required, regardless of the algorithm employed.

Jon Kleinberg
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/nat00.pdf

Lets take this phrase by phrase to see what does this actually mean for anonymous file sharing clients like ANts P2P, MUTE and Freenet.

• α=2 is the only exponent at which any decentralized algorithm can achieve a delivery time bounded by any polynomial in logN.
• 
  
• logN refers to the width of a network.
• 
  
• As the number of users (N) increases, the average number of hops between any two users, the width, increases by a factor of logN.
• 
  
• However, it is expected delivery time (T) for messages sent between users that is important for file sharing.
• 
  
• T increases by a factor of logN only for small world networks (α=2). For other networks T is very much larger.
• 
  
• T for a ad-hoc overlay p2p net (like ANts, MUTE or Freenet) is the number of users a file or query has to be forwarded via to reach its destination, the path length (L).
• 
  
• For a small network the path length is small so that a workable amount of bandwidth in total is used in uploading and downloading for each hop along path length.
• 
  
• For a large network L is far too large unless the network is small world although ironically the width of the network still scales by logN.

• for every other exponent, an asymptotically much larger delivery time is required, regardless of the algorithm employed.
• 
  
• So you can come up with whatever clever message routing method you like, it will not scale unless it is small world.
• 
  
• It is the network structure, the topology not the routing algorithm that determines if a network scales.
• 
  
• So neither ANts P2P or MUTE will scale by improving routing algorithms while they remain networks with a random topology(structure).
• 
  
• However, Iain Clark of Freenet seems to have already made this break through and has redesigned Freenet 0.7 to be small world.

I have decided to do the same for ANts p2p file sharing by making a very simple mod that will force the network to be small world.

kerjodando, the name of my ANts p2p mod, will force users to connect to only friends or others that share a similar interest to themselves, a p2p small world social network.

I call these groups, swarms and they are controlled, like bit torrent, by a simple tracker. Users can be members of many swarms covering all their interests and social networks. Swarms can either be private (invitation only) or public.

In this way kerjodando will be more scalable and be able to grow much bigger.

I hope this make sense.

But as you can see ANts has to change if is going to get bigger rather than gradually die.

Beta Testing of New Ants P2P File Sharing Mod - Your Help is Needed [Urgent]

Sorry to ask but please could you help me to test the new mod of ANts p2p (kerjodando).

Would you also pass this post on to anyone who can help in testing.

To focus the testing it is BEST if everyone uses this meetup (swarm):

http://www.itsdargens.com/swarm/show_one/6ad9b233a173d19782cd03ac4b175fe6

Click on Start to launch the modded ANts p2p client (kerjodando).

Bug fixes to the itsDargens.com (ANts content layer) website are currently been worked on.

Also, an new USER FRIENDLY GUI for ANts p2p II that will be web based.

Please let me know your ideas.

I also need people to help me with the admin of a new sourceforge project site for:

• ANts p2p II
• kerjodando ipfilter.dat sharing and
  
• itsDargens.com content layer for anonymous p2p

So please email me if you can help.

ezzy.elliott@gmail.com

Pow! kerjodando and ANTs p2p II Moving to Sourceforge

I have decided to speed up the project by doing the following:

1. Move code for kerjodando ipfilter.dat sharing to sourceforge.
2. Develop the improved Ants p2p II at sourceforge.
3. Recruit 2 or 3 Ants p2p enthusiasts to help move ANts p2p2 II along
4. Advertise the kerjodando/Ants p2p separately to content layer itsDargens.com
5. Make a comprehensive help site for kerjodando/Ants P2P II
6. Make application software available only from content layer itsDargens.com or other content layer sites.
7. Make big soft launch with 100 users
   

Ez

New Content on itsDargens.com Private File Sharing

Loads of bugs on itsDargens.com. Will be trying to clear them by end of month. The site basically works. It does what it says on the tin. I've added some new content, as you can see above.

kerjodando P2P File Sharing Social Network on Ning

Share your files using sites such as www.itsDargens.com on a social network.

Dargens allows users to form public or private groups to share files "anonymously".

Users join group by clicking on a simple link. Share your links on new file sharing social network.

Have fun.

Goto kerjodando p2p file sharing social network (http://filesharing.ning.com/)

Dargens File Sharing on TV

See latest look and feel here. Still a lot of work to be done. Now Chinese New year is done we should make faster progress during the year of the Boar (pig).

If you want to download MP3s or videos try Dargens share your life, share your files, be intimate.

Joost Invites to Give Away to Dargens File Sharers users

I have two joost invitations to give away.

I will give them to two users who leave a comment here.

If there are more than two by the 7th March 2007 I will give the invitations to the user that gives the best reason for getting an invitation.

If you want to download MP3s or videos try Dargens share your life, share your files, be intimate.

New Logo for Dargens MP3s and Movies

Logo not finalised but we will use this one until we come up with something better.

New Look for Dargens

OK no more changes. All out of time. This will be the look for the beta.

itsDargens.com Person to Person Download Service Back Online

ItsDargens.com is back online.

Looking to have new look and feel up by end of Tuesday Chinese time.

Then sort out bugs and get working Beta by end of week.

Aim of the site is to allow people to download files from their old or new friends person to person rather than via internet.

This will make transfers quicker and more private.

The site will also list groups of people and the type of files they are sharing in both a public and private searchable index.

Nearly There With New Look

Nearly there for Dargens the file sharing meeting place website.

Aiming to have beta ready for 15th February.

Make new friends - be intimate share your life - share your files!

How to Install Ruby on Rails on CentOS 4.4

I thought that others might find it useful if I listed how I re-installed Ruby on Rails on to my server after its recent disk failure.

The steps:

1. Ruby
2. Gems
3. Ruby on Rails
4. Mongrel
5. Website
6. Configuration of Rails
7. Apache http configuration

Ruby
change directory to a temporary and get the Ruby rpm files from the web:
wget http://dev.centos.org/centos/4/testing/i386/RPMS/ruby-1.8.5-1.el4.centos.i386.rpm
wget http://dev.centos.org/centos/4/testing/i386/RPMS/ruby-devel-1.8.5-1.el4.centos.i386.rpm
wget http://dev.centos.org/centos/4/testing/i386/RPMS/ruby-docs-1.8.5-1.el4.centos.i386.rpm
wget http://dev.centos.org/centos/4/testing/i386/RPMS/ruby-irb-1.8.5-1.el4.centos.i386.rpm
wget http://dev.centos.org/centos/4/testing/i386/RPMS/ruby-libs-1.8.5-1.el4.centos.i386.rpm
wget http://dev.centos.org/centos/4/testing/i386/RPMS/ruby-mode-1.8.5-1.el4.centos.i386.rpm
wget http://dev.centos.org/centos/4/testing/i386/RPMS/ruby-mysql-2.7-8.el4.centos.i386.rpm (NO NEED TO LOAD IF YOU HAVE A DB)
wget http://dev.centos.org/centos/4/testing/i386/RPMS/ruby-postgres-0.7.1-4.el4.centos.i386.rpm (NO NEED TO LOAD IF YOU HAVE A DB)
wget http://dev.centos.org/centos/4/testing/i386/RPMS/ruby-rdoc-1.8.5-1.el4.centos.i386.rpm
wget http://dev.centos.org/centos/4/testing/i386/RPMS/ruby-ri-1.8.5-1.el4.centos.i386.rpm
wget http://dev.centos.org/centos/4/testing/i386/RPMS/ruby-tcltk-1.8.5-1.el4.centos.i386.rpm
Use rpm –ivh packagename to install


Gems
Download latest Gems:
wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/17190/rubygems-0.9.2.tgz
tar zxf rubygems-0.9.2.tgz
cd rubygems-0.9.2
sudo ruby setup.rb


Ruby on Rails
Install rails
sudo gem install rails

Install mysql bindings
sudo gem install mysql -- --with-mysql-include=/usr/include/mysql\ --with-mysql-lib=/usr/lib/mysql --with-mysql-config

Update to latest version of Rails.

Mongrel
sudo gem install mongrel

change directory to the root directory of website then:

mongrel_rails start -p 4000


Website
FTP the contents of the Ruby on Rails directory to the root of the public http directory on the server.


Configuration of Rails
If you already have a database for your Ruby on rails application dump it then use phpmyadmin to create a database then upload the dumped database.

Then update the config/database.yml file onthe sever for user, passwords, socket and database name.


Apache http configuration
I use Direct Admin on my server so it is easy to change the apache configuration.

You may have to change httpd.conf to include the proxy module first take the # from these lines:
#LoadModule proxy_module modules/libproxy.so
#AddModule mod_proxy.c

Then add the following lines to the http config file:
ProxyPass / http://www.itsdargens.com:4000/
ProxyPassReverse / http://www.itsdargens.com:4000/
Backslash very important!




Links
http://railswiki.involution.com/index.php/Main_Page

Feb 2007 Pizza On Rails

PizzaOnRails

Went to Pizza on Rails last night. Very good met loads of interesting people working on loads of interesting project some of which weren't covered by NDAs so could be discussed. More motivated than ever now. see www.pizzaonrails.com.

We're Going Cuckoo About Look of Site

Still have not got the look and feel as we want it. Trine has been pulling her hair out - we are aiming to launch a beta 15th Feb 2007 so we are running out of time. P2P F2F file sharing is complex enough without a poor website.

itsDargens / kerjodando p2p Server Down

The its Dargens website and kerjodando p2p server are down due to an issue at our host company Netrino ltd.

We received the following messages from them:

25th Jan 2007

Dear Customer

As you are no doubt aware, last year both Redbus Interhouse, the company from which we purchase most of our data centre space, and Telecity were both acquired by the investment group 3i to form TelecityRedbus, the single largest data centre operator in Europe. Since the date of the sale, wholesale prices have increased rapidly, partly due to the monopoly on space now held by the company, but also the scarcity of available space in the centres themselves with demand for space now far exceeding supply.

When we renewed our contracts last year, we were subjected to a significant price increase which saw our costs double overnight. We were determined not to compromise the excellent value of our dedicated servers and colocation space, and kept our retail pricing static despite the huge cost increase. We were able to achieve this partly because of the volume discounts we had negotiated on IP transit, but also by making savings numerous savings within the company. One of the savings was with our freelance staff which, we will be the first to admit, has had a serious affect on the quality of the support we have been able to give in the last year. Despite our best efforts to improve the situation, many customers have commented that the support we are currently able to offer is not as effective as a year ago, and this is something we are determined to change.

Once again, we come to renewal time for the first of our three data centre contracts and have found prices to increase by a further 60%. We have negotiated hard over the last month since we received the renewal price, but have been unable to achieve any reduction in this rate. We do not wish to be forced into making further savings to compromise our operation any further, and are also concerned about raising retail pricing in line with the costs as it would seriously upset the the excellent value our range of services offers.

After much contemplating, we have this week signed a deal with a new data centre provider, Blue Square Data, to relocate a large proportion of our operation to their flagship facility, Blue Square House in Maidenhead. The site is one of the strongest of the new data centres, with technical facilities of the same standard as the Docklands operations but at a price which offers far better value and will allow us to restart our investment in client support without having to make increases in our retail pricing. As contracts with Redbus expire over the coming year, we will be relocating the majority of servers currently housed in Redbus facilities to the new facility. Once a significant number of machines have moved, we will be relocating our London office to the Blue Square facility itself, giving us an on-site presence during office hours and ensuring any problem which requires attention to a physical server can be actioned far quicker than at the present time.

We will keep our two points of presence in Docklands ensuring we are able to take advantage of the IP transit deals we have negotiated, and have commissioned 2 x Gigabit circuits between the POP's and Blue Square to give a fully resilient backhaul to Docklands.

Your server is currently located in the area covered by our first contract, which expires at the end of the month. We therefore intend to relocate it to the new facility on the evening of Friday 26th January. The server will be shut down some time after 10pm and moved to the new facility where it will be reinstated on our new network node. We expect all work to be complete by 4am, although we aim to have no server offline for no longer than 2 hours. No IP address or other configuration changes are needed - the server will continue to operate as normal once active in the new building.

If you have any queries about this move, please drop us a line either by replying to this email, or calling on 0207 670 1670.




28th Jan 2007
It looks suspiciously like the disk in this machine is about to die. I might be able to rescue it for long enough to copy the files off, but to do so I need your root password as I can't even get as far as single user mode. Please let me know what it is if you would like me to attempt a rescue, if not, I think a reload with a new disk is the best solution.


30th Jan 2007

I've been over to the data centre this evening myself to try and get this working. It appears that /boot is corrupted, most probably due to the disk in your server failing. I'm going to have Luke take a look in the morning to see if he can work out a way of getting it to boot so you can recover data, but it is most likely that the disk will have to be replaced and a fresh OS installed.

I will update you once I have spoken to Luke. In the mean time, it would be sensible to ensure your backups are close at hand so that you can restore sites as necessary should a rebuild be needed.

Anonymous P2P in Work Place and University | Websense bypass | Web proxy avoidance

As an experiment I tried to use kerjodando p2p file sharing client in my work place behind the firewall and a websense proxy.

A difficult environment for p2p file sharing similar to that faced by many university students.

Kerjodando p2p (an ANts p2p mod originally developed by Italian student Gwren, Roberto Rossi) connected and I could upload and download files.

Moreover the connection was secure, encrypted and "anonymous" (friend to friend so IP address hidden as file location not linked to IP address as in ordinary file sharing applications).

Generally, to connect to a p2p file sharing network you need to meet three conditions:

1. Your IP address needs to be externally visible to the internet
   
2. You need an open communications port
3. You need access to the internet to upload and download
   

Kerjodando p2p met these three contions as follows:

1. When you click on a swarm "start" link at the swarm index site http://www.itsdargens.com/ the p2p client automatically downloads and sets up your external IP address even if you're behid a firewall, NAT or proxy.
2. Kerjodando p2p spoofs SSL and uses port 443. So if you can surf the internet then it will connect and you can file share. Port 80 and 443 are used for web surfing.
3. Again if you can surf the internet via a browser you can file share. You just need to set-up kerjodando p2p in the same way that the browser was set-up. In my case I looked in the Options|Advanced|connections and found the proxy port and address. I then entered these into kerjodando's proxy setting.

The great thing about this is that while you're file sharing it looks like you either using VOIP, SSL FTP or a secure connection to a website.

So all those students at Zeropaid.com who think that they have been locked out of file sharing now can do it in a secure way.

I am currently testing kerjodando p2p on this page click START KERJODANDO to download the Java client and connect to the test swarm.

You can also set up your own swarms to test.

There is no need to register or log in to use this website.

Ruby on Rail For Faster Downloads Updated

The website has been updated. Should be easier to connect to download faster.

Also, new "look and feel", see above, done by a new web designer. She is from Shanghai and I think her design show promise.





Do the following to download test MP3 / video and share your files.



Click of link HERE >>>>then download Thingy opens (yes to all questions) >>>>>connect>>>>>>search>>>>>download small file>>>END






You can look at "Test Swarm" page on Dargens here with out opening the download Thingy.



.