[Server-devel] Network transparent XS services - limitations and alternatives

[Joshua N Pritikin]

On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 07:53:19PM -0400, C. Scott Ananian wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 7:40 PM, Martin Langhoff
> <martin.langhoff at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Network_principles#Disconnected_operation is
> >> a principled means to substitute unavailable resources in the offline
> >> case.
> >
> > The solution you suggest has problems, and I mentioned them in my
> > previous email. Have you got any light to shed on them?
> 
> a) Don't lie about DNS entries when you are connected.
> b) When you are disconnected, use a DNS server which allows you to map
> names to short lifetime addresses, then serve resources for those
> addresses.

Maybe I don't understand the big picture, but just a & b seem 
unworkable. Here is the use case:

Here I am in India with a wireless CDMA connection that typically 
provides 50 kbytes per sec with 500ms latency. This is not fast enough 
to olpc-update laptops from Cambridge. I must use xs-rsync, connected or 
not connected. Or I must use a USB key. In the long term, I prefer to 
use xs-rsync because of the promise of automatic updates to a large 
number of laptops.

So here is a network service which must use the XS regardless of the 
status of the internet connection and which should not interfere with 
users browsing the internet or XS internet cache.

-- 
American? Vote on the National Initiative for Democracy, http://votep2.us