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Even if the servers ( special clients) belong to a unique logical group, their SAFE addresses would place them into various SAFE groups where they wouldn’t be able to make decisions based on their logical group purpose (aka the application). They must and can function only based on ways accepted by their local SafeNet groups (and group leaders) so I doubt that this could work.

They can’t have their own “app” mind. Each must behave accessing to the group in which there are regular SAFE consensus rules. If some way of addressing and processing data isn’t available to the network in general, it can’t be available to a group of servers running an app either. It would be weird (the network would be dysfunctional) if someone could put together an app that would let the servers read and write data to SAFE as they please).

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Yes. Though, instead of random selection, one could pick the one with the address closest to their own in XOR space (for quicker lookup.)

Exactly!!! :heart_eyes_cat:

“within the group” => I’m talking about organizing a “server farm” operated by a single owner (or a trusted group), who ALREADY KNOWS all the IP addresses. In that context, it is most certainly not important.

I was kinda waiting for somebody to mention it :kissing_cat:

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The SAFE network is trying to take out the server from the equation, which is very possible (and desirable) in the majority of the cases. I started this thread about a simple workaround that could “bring back the server” in the few cases when we need it.

So now, in order to satisfy this architecture, a tool to enable convenient Sybil-attacks on the network should be built into the system.

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If by “system” and “network” you mean the SAFE network, then no: this architecture does not require anything new to be built into the system, it’s just uses existing components. Yes, using those components this way would indeed expose the service itself to attacks, but whether one is willing to take that risk is the personal choice of the developer. There may be things that are just not possible / feasible / simple enough to implement serverless.

But if you replace “developer” with “attacker” then the idea doesn’t sound so attractive, that’s my point. I’m not concerned that a dev would screw up and lose his data or app, but that the same mechanism could be used to overwhelm specific groups (Sybil attack) and rob everyone in them blind.

By design the randomness in XOR address space is the key security feature.

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He’s not talking about choosing your XOR address, he’s talking about starting a few nodes that will be randomly spread on the XOR space and allowing users to direct their message to the address closest to their own position in the XOR space. The goal is to reduce the amount of bounce they need to talk to the server. There’s no new feature.

Then the app devs uses a known SD to list the current XOR address for the users to choose from.

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Maybe I wasn’t clear. The service is an individual app, run by a single operator. You can run a DDoS against the nodes they operate. People won’t be able to access it, but that’s about it; it won’t mess up anything for anybody else (i.e. to the general users of the network.)

Again: Nothing about how the network works is “redesigned” or “altered” – all I’m talking about is a pointer to a set of nodes


Am I missing something?

I see.

Hmmm, how does that help? You still need to either wait until at least one replica copy is made.
And if you do that you have to give up caching because noone except that one node has the latest data.

Actually, that wasn’t the goal, but that would be an obvious implementation decision from the client’s point of view.

This is the idea in a nutshell. A set of servers, running on the SAFE network, serving dynamic content.

No, we’re not talking about blocks and copies and caching. We’re talking about direct messages to a server, like how you’re communicating with a web server. For the few cases when it’s easier to use a “classic” client/server architecture compared to the awesomeness that the SAFE network provides.

Didn’t DavidMtl say SD (Structured Data) just 3 comments above?

So is this about Dynamic Stateless App Servers, then?

I think what is confusing is that while there are plan for direct(through the XOR space) messaging between two nodes the feature isn’t yet done so when people think about data they think in term of data saved on Safe.

Yes, you use a structured data to list the nodes where the server can be contacted. It’s a phone book.

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I see now. Before I thought to save SD on those servers, in order to use them as DB & Application servers.

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My concern with this though is the amount of bandwidth that a node will have to deal with if it becomes a popular feature. On the clearnet, personal computer aren’t use to transmit the data of others but with this, everyone is transmitting everyone’s data. It’s a clear disadvantages of using XOR space instead of IP.

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That too. If one client knew the IP, all clients would know the IP, so rate limiting, DDoS, firewalls, CDN and everything else becomes a necessary part of this solution.

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Isn’t this the same thing that I face even now when my website, “hosted” from my laptop in my bedroom, gets popular? I’ll just move the service to a server on AWS or Dreamhost or whatnot.

Again, none of it is new, and none of it has been a deal breaker for the internet: surprise surprise, people actually run servers there!

The only difference is that while it’s the standard mode of operation on the current internet, it would been a minority use case for the SAFE network.

For the person running the server, yes, it’s the same but that’s not what I meant. What I meant is the extra overhead on the network itself. When people start running server behind an address in the xor space all the communication with that server needs to travel through the xor space. This means that each nodes along the way will see an increase in traffic on their machine.

With IP we don’t have this problem since the data is routed around by specialized router, but in XOR space there is “no” router, it’s the node that does the job. So by adding server behind nodes we increases the load on the network. Imagnie if tomorrow everybody uses Safe and all servers are only accessible through the XOR space. It would be highly inefficient and it would limit drastically the type of device that can afford to run a node.

With that said. Since this is not a new feature (well besides the messaging that isn’t done yet) It’s gonna happen. I’m just pointing out the obvious outcome.

As I understand, the path (in XOR space) between two nodes depend on both of their addresses. In effect, every node will have a completely unique path to that one machine. In other words, there will be no “along the way” because there will be no common nodes in the routes (other than by accident).

I understand that, I was talking in the general sense. The more server will open on the network the more the load will be on individual nodes to pass the traffic around. I’m not trying to say it’s a bad idea or anything, just thinking out loud of the implication for the network when more people start doing that.

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Yea, I see what you mean now; yes, if this use case would grow dominant, that could happen. Fortunately, it will almost never be necessary to use, so I’m sure developers will try to avoid it in favor of the faster and more robust serverless model :smiley_cat: It’s only an “if all else fails” last resort.

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