DistOS-2011W Public Goods

From Soma-notes

Members

  • Lester Mundt - lmundt at connect.carleton.ca
  • Fahim Rahman - frahman at connect.carleton.ca
  • Andrew Schoenrock - aschoenr at scs.carleton.ca

Main Goals

Based on the discussion last class, what I think the focus of the project should be is what are the kind of things that fundamentally should be a "public good" as opposed to exactly how to implement them. Some of the ideas we have come up with can be used for various implementations but I think, in general, we can rely on previous work for most of (if not all) of the implementation details. If this assumed direction is correct, then I think we should aim to try and answer the following questions:

  • What are good candidates for public goods (ie. DNS, internet cache, physical connections, etc)? Why should these services be fundamentally controlled by the public? What are the flaws in the way they are currently used or why should they not be centrally controlled by a single entity? What incentives are there for a given user to participate (willingly or unwillingly)?
  • What would be the net benefit for the local community participating in these public goods?
  • What would be the net impact on the entire internet if all local communities created these public goods (more secure, less bandwidth wasted, etc.)
  • Could there be disadvantages if so how does the benefits offset these drawbacks?
  • What would the cost of the public goods be? What sort of tax would the organizers need to levi.
  • After identifying some candidates for public goods, try and determine what is the commonality between these services, in problem, in alternative? What are some things that are fundamentally different about these goods?

Note to prof: Please let us know if you have any comments on the overall direction we are taking the project.

Potential Topics

  • What else occurs on the internet
    • physical infrastructure (phoneline, cable, satellite, etc)
    • DNS, BGP, ----
    • TCP/IP, UDP
    • HTTP, SMTP, POP, IMAP, FTP, SSH
    • email = SPAM, search, internet caching

Note to prof: This is still a working list, but if you notice anything that we should definitely try to cover that we haven't thought of, please let us know.

Current Work

  • Lester - Physical infrastructure
  • Andrew - Caching
  • Fahim - DNS

Candidates for Public Goods (Use this area to post your ongoing work)

Physical Infrastructure (Lester)

Web Caching (Andrew)

Introduction

In general, the idea behind web caching is the temporary storage of web objects that can be used later without having to retrieve the data from the original server again. When a new web request is made, the resulting data is stored in a cache after being delivered to the end user. If another user requests the same data, barring certain conditions, the cached data is returned to the user and the request is not passed on to the originating web server. There are many aspects of many websites that do not change very often (ie. logos, static text, pictures, other multimedia) and hence are good candidates for caching (2). Web caches can either exist on the end user's machine (in the browser, for instance) or can exist somewhere between the user the servers they wish to communicate with (1).

Web Caching as a Public Good

Why would turning web caching into something controlled by the public be a good thing? How could this be done (possible high level implementation options)?

Local and Global Benefits of Having Web Caching as a Public Good

Potential Concerns and Disadvantages

Relevant Papers & Links

Background stuff

Other

Misc Notes

  • look into LAN caching. if we proposed a new infrastructure where neighborhoods are networked, distributed caching can be done here.

DNS (Fahim)

  • With free, public DNS, where is this information about user behaviour going, if anywhere? Is this an example of a good that should be managed by a central/public/democratized authority?
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