Hosting Problems For distributed.net

Yoda2 writes "I've always found the distributed.net client to be a scientific, practical use for my spare CPU cycles. Unfortunately, it looks like they lost their hosting and need some help. The complete story is available on their main page but I've included a snippet with their needs below: 'Our typical bandwidth usage is 3Mb/s, and reliable uptime is of course essential. Please e-mail [e-mail] if you think you may be able to help us in this area.' As they are already having hosting problems, I hate to /. them, but their site is copyrighted so I didn't copy the entire story. Please help if you can." Before there was SETI@Home, Distributed.net was around - hopefully you can still join the team.

Distributed hosting?

[gnovos]

Maybe they should go in for distributed hosting, like say one machine that just houses the IP address and a few thousand mirrors that the requests can be directed to as they come in. Not only is it a project that is just ASKING to be performed by distributed.net, but if they make some catchy point and click (i.e. EASY to use) clients that anyone with a large following can use, we might see the end of such things as Slashdot subscriptions and a resurgence of the "community" feel of the web.

Aliens, crypto or cancer - what's your choice?

[crudeboy]

I think the use of spare cpu cycles is an excellent way to support science, but...
For some time the only one around was seti@home which analyzes noise from space, I think, in search for alien lifeforms, then there's distributed.net doing crypto and math stuff, (correct me if I'm wrong). And then there's people like Intel running medical research in areas like cancer and alzheimer.

I don't know about you, but to me medical research feels a somewhat more beneficial to humanity than search for aliens. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the work done by seti and distributed isn't important or shouldn't be done, just that there's other research that might be more worthwhile supporting.

That's just my opinion, but if you feel the same way, checkout this site [intel.com].

that's a lot of bandwidth

[Trepidity]

A continuous three Megabits per second works out to somewhere just under a Terabyte a month. Not going to be cheap.

Re:Aliens, crypto or cancer - what's your choice?

[Sircus]

I sell a commercial SSH client and dabble in cryptography as a hobby - so I guess I fall in to the first category. There are plenty of reasons to be interested in cryptography aside from the Ashcroft/FBI-mandated ones, though. My issue with the cancer stuff is that if these companies are going to make billions off some cure (and if they come up with a cure, they sure are), I'm of the opinion that *they* should be the ones putting the billions into the research, not costing my cycles/power. I wouldn't give my facilities away to any other commercial venture for free, why should the situation change because they want to make money off cancer patients?

If the distributed cancer network weren't there, and if it's really performing a genuinely useful job for the companies, you can be sure they'd be investing the $x million required to just buy a supercomputer or three to do it for them. So the only difference I see the cancer project making is that it's saving huge pharmaceutical firms a few million dollars. The world's cryptographers, most of whom are academics (ignoring the NSA-employed ones for a minute) don't have the millions of dollars to throw around if d.net wasn't there - neither do the mathematicians interested in the results of d.net's other project, Optimal Goulomb Rulers. As a result, I see d.net as making more of a difference than the cancer stuff.

All that said, those are my reasons for running d.net - you've got your own reasons, and it's your own choice.

Re:Aliens, crypto or cancer - what's your choice?

[Sarunas]

Don't forget another practical distributed project. Stanford's protein folding project: folding@home [stanford.edu]

Pointless project by now

[Skuto]

Distributed.net has gotten to be a more or less pointless project by now.

Originally, the point they wanted to make was that 64-bit RC5 was not strong enough to protect privacy.

They started, what, 4-5 years ago? About 30 000 computers running for 4 years can't break 64-bit encryption. Geez, I'd say that, if anything, the conclusion would be that 64-bits is plenty for shopping etc. unless you've got some really _big_ secrets. Certainly plenty for day-to-day mail. More or less the opposite of what they wanted to prove.

Nowadays they've added the OGR stuff to appear at least a bit more usefull, but in reality, the applications of those results are very limited.

Really, the right thing to do is not to waste power on such pointless projects.

--
GCP (Moderation suggestion: -1 Disagree)

distributed.net was useful in the past

[athmanb]

By proving that RC5-56 can be broken by simple home PCs (with an algorithm as simple as you call it "counting to a million by ones", they IMHO did a large part to educate lawmakers that the age old U.S. export restrictions have to be overturned.
And they succeeded in this.

What I however don't understand is why they kept doing their cryptography projects afterwards. Proving that RC5-64 is breakable while you can buy 256 bit encryption freely is indeed just a stupid waste of CPU cycles and bandwidth.

I'd like to see them discontinue RC5-64, and concentrate their work on OGR and maybe on other, new projects.

Who cares?

[athmanb]

Honestly.

We all know that eventually, the key is going to be found, and some stupid message will be deciphered ("Congratulations on solving the 64 bit challenge. blablabla")

Why waste trillions of CPU cycles and thousands of $ in bandwidth to find something out that we already know is true?