Kenosis: P2P RPC that decentralized BitTorrent
Ben Sittler noticed that Kenosis got Slashdotted yesterday:
UnderScan writes “Eric Ries, writer/programmer/CTO, authored an article ‘Kenosis and the World Free Web’ at Freshmeat [Owned by Slashdot's Parent OSTG]. Kenosis is described as a ‘fully-distributed peer-to-peer RPC system built on top of XMLRPC.’ He has combined his Kenosis with BitTorrent & removed the need for a centralized tracker. He states: ‘To demonstrate Kenosis’s suitability for these new applications, we have used it to improve upon another peer-to-peer filesharing application that Just Works: BitTorrent. BitTorrent does one thing incredibly well. Using a centralized “tracker,” BitTorrent manages efficient distribution of data that is in high demand. We have extended BitTorrent, using Kenosis, to eliminate this dependence on a centralized tracker.’ See also the Kenosis README for details on using Kenosis-enabled BitTorrent.”
From http://kenosis.sourceforge.net/ Kenosis is:
- a fully-distributed p2p RPC system built on top of XMLRPC.
- zero-defect software.
- highly compatible.
Four years ago, I wrote an article for freshmeat called “The World Free Web” in which I described a way to make Web content available in a distributed and anonymous way via Freenet. Back then, I expected, as did many others, that Freenet was on the verge of completion, and all that remained was to think of interesting new applications to write on this new platform.
Now, for the record, I still have high hopes for Freenet and am still a contributor to the Freenet Foundation. But as it stands, Freenet simply does not work, and it is not a suitable platform for the development of new applications.
Two years ago, Malcolm Handley and I started the Dasein Software Partnership in order to create new peer-to-peer tools and applications for the Free Software world. We started writing applications for Freenet, but grew frustrated with Freenet’s lack of stability. Next, we switched to The Circle, a distributed hashtable based on Chord. Despite its maturity, it too is not stable or reliable enough to form a suitable platform.
So we decided that we would need to create a new system, designed from the ground up for simplicity, stability, and scalability. We call that system Kenosis.
Kenosis is a fully-distributed peer-to-peer RPC system built on top of XMLRPC. Nodes are automatically connected to each other via a Kademlia-style network and can route RPC requests efficiently to any online node. Kenosis does not rely on a central server; any Kenosis node can effectively join the network (”bootstrap”) from any connected node.