[tahoe-dev] [tahoe-lafs] #68: implement distributed introduction, remove Introducer as a single point of failure

[Zooko O'Whielacronx]

On Mon, Jul 5, 2010 at 9:09 PM, Randy Bush <randy at psg.com> wrote:
> sorry to bother but we would like to be sure we understand.
>
> this is multiple introducers to the same cloud?  i.e. not that i can
> join multiple clouds, each with one or more introducers, at the same
> time?

That's right—Faruq's project, ticket #68, is about multiple
introducers for the same set of storage servers.

> not that getting rid of the spof is not a really *great* improvement.
> the spof was a showstopper.

This is interesting! Why is the single Introducer a show-stopper for you?

It seems that for most people it isn't such a big deal, since
introducers are needed only rarely and if you make a backup copy of
the introducer's private key then you can recreate it after its death.
(Introducers retain no persistent state beyond that private key.)

There was a volunteer grid that had to be reconstructed when the
introducer died and there was no backup of its private key. (Note: I
was the sysadmin responsible for that introducer.) The people who took
over from me and set up the *new* volunteergrid arranged for several
trusted people to have backup copies of the introducer private key so
that won't happen again.

Of course, having truly decentralized introduction would be better in
many ways than this manual approach. :-)

Regards,

Zooko