peer-to-peerlang (was RE: One Million Processes)

[Thomas Lindgren]

--- Vlad Dumitrescu <vlad_dumitrescu@REDACTED>
wrote:
> From: "Thomas Lindgren"
> > Peer-to-peer would be an interesting new field for
> > Erlang as well, technically speaking. How about a
> > language (-version) with lots of support for, um,
> > whatever the p2p-people need when they write their
> > algorithms?
> 
> Are language extensions really needed for this? IMHO
> library support will
> suffice...
>
> > Much of that could likely be written in Erlang. My
> > guess is that Erlang already has a lot of what one
> > wants (e.g., distribution, transparency), but not
> > quite (e.g., some measure of
> security/untrustedness,
> > millions of nodes in distribution, ...).
> 
> The question is whether the standard distribution
> mechanism *should* be used in
> such a setting at all. I also think the idea of
> automagically having the nodes
> talk to each other is attractive, using normal
> socket connections resolves a lot
> of problems. For instance, security can be handled
> in a library, not by hacking
> the runtime.

Yeah, I was thinking mainly of a hacked OTP
distribution (or a nearly-separate distribution even),
possibly with some security extensions to the runtime
to avoid unnecessary exploits.

Though it could be interesting to consider more
sweeping changes.

Best,
Thomas


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