Webcache

Description

The idea of webcache is to upload the shared data into an ISP proxy and leave it there for other clients to download.

The description of the scheme can be found with full details in the original post. Plus, there are lot's of additional documentation pages all around the net; Google is your friend ;)

History

The idea began on 13 April 2003 at eMule's forums when sufcrusher posted this post. The history can be followed there up to the first eMule mods implementing it.

Pros and cons

Pros

• The most evident pro, and the main purpose of it, is that web proxies have a lot of bandwidth and very high speed so the data sharing speeds should be greatly boosted.

• Also, P2P clients generate heavy traffic on ISPs since they open and close lots of connections in very little time and send/receive large amounts of data. Using webcache would stop these connections from going through the ISPs since they would only get to the ISPs' proxies.

Cons

• Since all your data (or some of it) would pass through your ISP's proxy, your ISP would know what you are sharing, so your privacy would suffer greatly.

--Sk8muc 15:01, 14 Feb 2005 (CET): Sorry, but you have to pass your ISP's infrastucture any way. Most ISP's operate Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS). Those already collect all necessary data and every time a String with ".mp3" passes through your network, a record in a database will be made. As it's the ISP's infrastrcute, they already know who it is, as the link between your IP Address and the Radius server is simple as nothing else!

Solution: we have to start crypting all the traffic with AES-256, and private keys. Remember: would you send your username and passwort in clear text to your root sever? Everybody is using SSH, but for P2P sharing, it seems that we are afraid of it.

• If you encrypt your traffic then you can't use webcache anyways. Encrypting e.g. with the openssl library like https or ssh does would mean an extension to the edonkey protocol but that should be possible with backwards compatibility.

• It is not clear whether using ISPs' web proxies for things other than web data is legal. Even if it was in your country, legislation are different from state to state, so clients try to conform to the broadest possible range of legislation to keep their users from having unpleasant experiencies with the law. Also, allthough the webcache feature might be better for your ISP, it can be bad if the traffic is too high, so you might have your ISP breaking the contract with you and leaving you without connection.

--Sk8muc 15:01, 14 Feb 2005 (CET): Sharing is nowadays in most countries illegal. I've never heard that the simple use of the ISP's webproxy is illegal. Use the proxy, as this eases the traffic of small packets on the WAN links.

• Like it or not, webcache at large scale becomes a DDoS to the ISP's http cache servers. The ISPs' clients will notice a worse quality of the service, and ISPs will blame the webcache, being right. What's worse: P2P developers that support webcache could be sued for developing DDoS tools and invite people to use it, ISPs can say they are losing clients because of the quality the lost in their services, and so, P2P developer teams could have big problems.

--Sk8muc 15:01, 14 Feb 2005 (CET): Common, there are so many DDoS tools outside and why should P2P traffic break the proxies? Then we should immediately stopp using proxies. As with 3MBit and 8ms letancy every cache is slower then the direct request (reflecting my sitation here)

• The P2P networks are being heavily tracked by some governments since they believe they are used for illegal purposes. There is a popular saying: "if it works, don't touch it". Well, that applies it here.

--Sk8muc 15:01, 14 Feb 2005 (CET): Yet an other reason for encrypting the traffic! Thanks for the hint!

Implementing webcache

There are already some clients out there supporting webcache. Most of them are eMule mods. We do NOT recommend using them. These mods bring down the P2P reputation and by using them you contribute in doing so.

Regarding aMule

Discussions about implementing webcache feature into aMule have appeared many times in aMule's forums although maybe the most relevant is this one.

Anyway, until further (and highly unlikely) news, neither aMule nor eMule are going to officially support webcache in any future release.