So far Freenet hasn’t gained too many users, even though the project has received some media attention. The software is not ready to challenge more popular P2P clients (Kazaa, Direct Connect..) in terms of usability. Also, the high security routing method has been extremely slow.
But there is hope that the routing issue will be soon solved, which would definitely help Freenet to gain more users. The Freenet Project is now inviting advanced users to test their next generation routing. The new method promises to be possibly the most efficient P2P network ever seen and still maintaining the security and privacy.
The core idea behind the Next Generation Routing design is to make Freenet nodes much smarter about deciding where to route information. For each node reference in its routing table, a node will collect extensive statistical information including response times for requesting particular keys, the proportion of requests which succeed in finding information, and the time required to establish a connection in the first place. When a new request is received, this information is used to estimate which node is likely to be able to retrieve the data in the least amount of time, and that is the node to which the request is forwarded.Freenetproject.org
Written by: Lasse Penttinen @ 29 Aug 2003 13:15
