A few people have commented on my "Distributed Network Cache Service" suggestion since I posted it, and I would like to respond to their comments. The basic idea here is to add memory to the Net in a reliable way, so that the Net provides memory services in the way it now universally provides data transport services. The Net would then serve compressed encrypted Octet Strings to machines connected to it, and provide a consistant view of which Octet Strings were available at any point in time which was independent of the access point. Adding Octet Strings to the universe of available ones, with a specified lifetime, would involve a micropayment. Computers connected to the Net could then employ either Octet Strings or fixed length data consisting of a cryptographic hash and decryption key to describe any chunk of data, which would reduce the storage requirements of hosts accordingly. Replication and synchronization of data would be the responsiblity of the totality of machines providing the cache service, and would augment the storage capacity of ordinary hosts which often replicate data excessively and synchronize it poorly. As Lucky Green correctly points out, since the cache service would effectively serve prepared digital coccoons whose contents were not visible to it, protocols would be needed to ensure that data was not spoofed. However, this is a "who do cache servers trust to give them data" issue, and not a "how do we serve the data and provide a Network-wide consistant view of the database" issue. Such a system, implemented efficiently, could carry the Eternity service, reliable network news, and serve as a distribution point for all freeware. It could have terabytes of storage, using a fraction of the resources now consumed by the endlessly replicated news spools of hosts on the Net. It would be as uncensorable as Usenet, and survive the destruction or compromise of a large number of cache servers in the system. It would be reliable, and no ones data would be visible to anyone else. I think such a service is the "World File System" reduced to its most basic principles, upon which endless other useful services may be based. Comments? -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ enoch@zipcon.com $ via Finger $ {Free Cypherpunk Political Prisoner Jim Bell}