Rebranding distributed Erlang

[Joe Armstrong]

  Thought of the day.

  Distributed Erlang *is* a P2P system.

  Should we rebrand it as P2PE?

  Distributed Erlang has the following properties.

   - to join a distributed Erlang session you need to know
     the name of a distributed Erlang node that is running.

   - how you get the name of such a node is "out of band."

   - once you know the name of a running node in a distributed
     you join the session by talking to the node. If the
     cookies match you join the distribution group.

   - once you're in a distributed Erlang session all nodes
     know about all other nodes. They get node up and node down
     message when new nodes join and leave the group.

  Now that,  my friends, is pretty  much what any decent  peer to peer
system does (or should do).

  Been there  done that (years ago :-)  - and before the  P2P term was
even though of. 

				  -oOo-

  BTW  - what  are the  upper bounds  on a  the number  of nodes  in a
distributed Erlang  system? - If we  assume that joins  and leaves are
rare and that nodes are on-line  for long periods is it unrealistic to
have  a DE  system with  thousands/millions of  nodes? -  what  is the
limiting factor? - what breaks as the system gets large?