It's not true...

[gwren]

that I don't answer to questions posted... I simply don't have time to read
everything people write about ANts

I recently released a new version. When I get feedback I'll answer to all the
doubts!

Gwren

[stronzos]

I'm VERY VERY happy to see you gwren !!!!!

let's roll..... 

[Flik]

Gwren, Ants seems to have a big security problem. Even if I am not in the IRC, sometimes people contact me via the chat to thank for what they think they meight have received from me and ask me if I have some more files of that type for them!

[stronzos]

that's not a problem: people can contact you because they see your ID while they download files from you - but they can't know your IP, so they know nothing about you
And all this stuff is not related with the irc channel...

[Flik]

Oh, it really IS a problem. The way how Ants works is that the one who sends a file and the one who receives the file do not know each other. If Ants works correctly, no file should go directly from one peer to another peer. And in fact of this it should impossible for people to contact the sender of the file!

[crypton]

hi

I say long ago that Ants needs a bether gui
and remove the irc from ants.
This big tabs method is realy not user friendly.

I think gwren has no time to redesign the gui.

[gwren]

hi

I say long ago that Ants needs a bether gui
and remove the irc from ants.
This big tabs method is realy not user friendly.

I think gwren has no time to redesign the gui.

This is perfectly right, redesigning the gui is VERY time consuming 

Instead... for what concerns the security 

If ants works correctly the number of hops to reach a destination should be MINIMIZED
if you can reach your destination through ONE hop (the destination is your neighbour)
this is the best possible case isn't it?

Note that this is not a threat for you or for your neighbour.
Your neighbour may be a guy that is just proxing data or may be the recipient... you cannot
know... For what concerns the speed... well the argument "that guy is receiving data too quickly"
again cannot be enforced in fact:

1) Many people have speedy connections...
2) Ants is pipelining data (which makes the connection speedy even if you are routing through other nodes)
3) in a nat reasonably large your data will be mixed with others' data therefore that guy will never receive data too quickly don't worry
4) Finally the fact that you are "guessing" that the guy near you is the source of the data doesn't mean you can PROVE that he is the source. Formally you cannot prove this unless you are sure that the guy is connected ONLY to a set of zombies you created, which is by definition impossible, so I perfectly accept that your friend is guessing all your share. But try to ask him to PROVE that those files are yours! In Emule this is trivial... he will give you the result of his queries with (filename,IP), in Ants I believe it will be a bit more tricky isn't it

bye!

[Flik]

It would probably a good idea to remove the IP list of the active neighbour connections from the Ants dialog. This would prevent people from thinking the shown IP addresses are the sources and senders of the files they are downloading.

[ezzye]

Great to see Gwren back developing ANts p2p.

Re security issue.

Ants version II kerjodando addresses these issues.

1) No IRC as security hole can still chat anonymously.
2) New web based gui (open source) so easy to use
3) Can limit who you connect to so that you only connect with friends
4) Quick connection using NAT hole punching (STUNT) and Upnp that WORKS!

Try it and compare to ANTs p2p version 1.60 see which is quick and more secure!

Gwren thanks for your hard work.  We in the open source community really appreciate it.

http://www.dargens.com/

Thanks

[Flik]

Sorry, but I went several times over your strange web site, and what I see doesn´t look much like Ants. I can understand that you always point on your ants-like experiment, but to call it "Ants" makes me looking a bit confused. Please make a nice GUI for it, non web-based, that would be nice! :-)

[peppeli]

First Kerjodando;
Web based GUI is rather unattractive. It makes me feel like I'm really just surfing in the web instead of using a secure software. Kerjodando does seem simpler than Ants so there are some improvements.

Ants:
Generally very nice and efficient, perhaps even the best out there at the moment, because Ants works and it can be used to it’s purpose. The CPU consumption seems to have slown down a bit. This is good because it was the biggest turf off for me. The IRC-tab should be removed. It just doesn't feel safe knowing that you're chatting insecurely. GUI could also be improved so that more people would feel comfortable using Ants.

One more thing. Hopefully we will be seeing more Ants in the future. Project is not yet finished