pro/contra HubLink

[kp]

I thaught of doing a script where ptokax and bcdc work together to form a HubLink, after a little thinking I came up that it is possible, but on the other side I thaught, what would it be good for?

As I came to the conlusion that, the badnwidth wasted is a bit more, and the cpu useage also, compared to one hub where all useres logged in.

So is there actually a pro for linking Hubs together, instead of merging them together as one?

[nErBoS]

Hi,

Are you meaning something like this..
http://hub-link.sourceforge.net

Best regards, nErBoS

[kp]

nah, better, and it will show, all users in each hub not only in the hub where hublink runs, and you can use ptokax.

well compared to hub-link i found one pro.

[HaArD]

The PtokaX support script for Hub-Link is almost complete and is already running on a test network of several PtokaX hubs and another network with multiple hubsofts.

Hub-Link allows user of any connected hub with a support script to see all users of all other connected hubs.

Each hub can support a small number of users and consume a small amount of bandwidth while hub-link creates the experience of being in a larger hub by linking the smaller ones.

If one hub is down they can redirect their DNS Name to the IP of another hub in the network and users won't even notice.

With Userlist synching enabled even registered users can be moved around from hub to hub within the network with noticing any difference in terms of Chat/PM's/Userlist/Transfers.

The only restriction is Search requests by Passive users which are only relayed to the local hub, not the whole network.

[kp]

well I did not check the all features of HubLink, but

I know that when someone, uses HubLink Hub Software and connects to a Ptokax hub only in the HubLink Hub, the Users of the other Hub are shown, but not in the Ptokax Hub.

The other thing about the bandwidth, is, that all searches, in your case only active, see this I could change when running BCDC and a Ptokax script :), and all Connect request , and all chat messages, are shared, so where is the smaller amount of bandwidth used?

Other thing is, you got a HubClient with fake share, that connects to the hubs, and as I also thaugt you can"t share passive searches, without running a script in the specific hub, so I have a script enabled that checks, every active search and active connect, for the right IP, got bored of guys entering my hub with your fake share client and only sharing my users at their hub.

What about if a Hub goes down, and the owner does not notice?
I was thinking of way to bypass that, but have not got to any conlusion.

Hope you can understand why I think dc HubLink is not so good in my eyes.

I am sorry for saying my script would be better, when its not even in progress.

I do not think you will change your soft so every hubowner can realy decide if he wants his hub to be shared or not, but I think it is something to think about, like sending a $HubLink  on connect or someting like that, instead of faking share.

[plop]

Originally posted by kp
well I did not check the all features of HubLink, but

I know that when someone, uses HubLink Hub Software and connects to a Ptokax hub only in the HubLink Hub, the Users of the other Hub are shown, but not in the Ptokax Hub.

The other thing about the bandwidth, is, that all searches, in your case only active, see this I could change when running BCDC and a Ptokax script :), and all Connect request , and all chat messages, are shared, so where is the smaller amount of bandwidth used?

Other thing is, you got a HubClient with fake share, that connects to the hubs, and as I also thaugt you can"t share passive searches, without running a script in the specific hub, so I have a script enabled that checks, every active search and active connect, for the right IP, got bored of guys entering my hub with your fake share client and only sharing my users at their hub.

What about if a Hub goes down, and the owner does not notice?
I was thinking of way to bypass that, but have not got to any conlusion.

Hope you can understand why I think dc HubLink is not so good in my eyes.

I am sorry for saying my script would be better, when its not even in progress.

I do not think you will change your soft so every hubowner can realy decide if he wants his hub to be shared or not, but I think it is something to think about, like sending a $HubLink  on connect or someting like that, instead of faking share.

there isn't much difference between hub-link and bcdc as multi hub chat/link.
bcdc can even be more dangerous as every1 can enter a hub with sutch a thing.

plop

[kp]

Other thing is, you got a HubClient with fake share, that connects to the hubs, and as I also thaugt you can"t share passive searches, without running a script in the specific hub, so I have a script enabled that checks, every active search and active connect, for the right IP, got bored of guys entering my hub with your fake share client and only sharing my users at their hub.    

This would also work when using bcdc + a script.
You could also use ptokax :) + it would also would support passive connects as passive searches,
disadvantages till now, its not scripted and you need to scripts and bcdc.

Other thing is I still don't think the bandwidth is less, well okey, except with hublink since it doesn't support passive searches and connects

[HaArD]

kp,

I'm happy to dicuss the pros/cons of Hub-Link but would you mind knowing what you are talking about first?

You are talking out of thin air, based on some imagined script that you might write some day. I am talking from the experience of having written hub-link and having run hub-link for over a year with 4 hubs plus many conversations with users in networks with up to 12 hubs using hub-link.

The Hub-Link site clearly states that without a support script hub-link can only provide a multi-hub CHAT link. So if all you got was a chat link then hub-link performed EXACTLY as it was supposed to.
N.B. While a scripted hub might have seen your users in their userlist, they could not send them search requests or PM's or get their FileLists as your hub was not running the required support script for those functions. The support script for PtokaX is almost complete and will be released in conjunction with the next version of Hub-Link.

The Fake share is in the $MyINFO string sent to the Hub (the easiest type to detect), that ability is there but once you know how to configure things should not be required. Surely every hub has some way of permitting an Op to sign-in without meeting the minimum share?

The problem of hubowners knowing if their hub is running or not is not affected by hub-link. No, I take that back, with hub-link the other hubs would be aware that a hub has gone down and might be able to contact the hubowner to fix the issue. Depending on the group of hubowners they might even share access to a DNS account and could change the IP associated with the "DEAD" hub to another hub in the network that was running until the hubowner was available.

Hub-Link supports multi-hub passive connects.

Hub-Link does not support multi-hub passive search requests, this was a design CHOICE, I could support them if I wanted to, but I prefer to make the ACTIVE experience better to encourage people to get out of passive mode.

As for bandwidth, Hub-Link does allow a small hubowner to provide his users the experience of being in a larger hub without the bandwidth cost.

If you have the bandwidth to support a 1,000 user hub then there is no point in running hub-link, that would be stupid, you should have everyone connect to one hub.

If, however, your bandwidth can only sustain about 200 users and you have some friends who could also support that many, then using hub-link will give the connected users the experience of being in a larger "virtual" hub. There is an increase in bandwidth on all hubs since 1,000 users generate more search requests then 200, but it's less then running 1,000 users on one hub since the only $ConnectToMe's sent to a hub are for the users connected on that hub.

Hub-Link itself does not have to be run by one of the hubowners... it could be another of your friends. But, it does not use any significant bandwidth at all, and can easily be run by one of the hubowners.

As plop stated Hub-Link vs BCDC as the connection source is irrelevant. You could write the LUA script for BCDC to do almost everything that the Hub-Link Bot does but it would not change the requirement for a support script on the local hub. I can't think of anything that you could do in BCDC that you could not do with the Hub-Link Bot. Please feel free to prove me wrong by showing an example...

As for giving hubowners a choice... they have to install and run a support script, that a pretty difficult thing to do unintentionally.....????

Hub-Link exchanges several custom protocol messages when it connects to a hub. Without this exchange all you have is a NMDC look-alike client that is passing chat messages back and forth and possibly share-faking as well. If your hub scripts cannot detect and deal with that then your hub probably has very few legitimate sharing clients anyway.

In the next release hub-link will actually be even further restricted if you are not using a Registered Account which will make it more difficult to use hub-link on a Public Hubs without the owners permission/knowledge.

[[PT]CableGuy]

Originally posted by HaArD
...If you have the bandwidth to support a 1,000 user hub then there is no point in running hub-link, that would be stupid, you should have everyone connect to one hub....

?(
You are saying that if we connect 4 hubs (1000 users max in each)....we'll lose performance ?
Didn't get it right , sorry...

I thought if i had (for example) 1Mbit upload stream , with 1000 users connected (normaly)
and i connected to more hubs (like mine)...we could reach 5000 users , with no problems.
Please , clear my doubt. :]

[kp]

Very funny, see this is what happenes when one get carried away, I asked for answers and did not get them.
So I answered them myself


1. my hubprotection is okey so far, but this doesn't excuse anybody to fake his myinfostring or ?

2. your clients sends connectstome to a ptokax hub, ptokax doesn't check if the ip is right so it gets forwarded, bandwidth?

3. I might be wrong but lets estimate  2 only active user hub,
linked together and not only chat.
one user sends a search, goes to the hub, hub sends the search to all others, all others is alos the bcdc++ to link the hubs,
this client sends the search to the other hub where is also gets forwarded to all users, (one pro so far with active searches) replies get sent to the client right away,

but with active connects, I don't see the less bandwidth used.

[HaArD]

CableGuy,

You find 5 hubs with 1,000 users that want to use hub-link and we'll find out ok? There is an increase in bandwidth associated with linking a hub to others (Seach requests, additional Connection requests from remote users, Chat) if your bandwidth can support that load then theoretically hublink could do it. In practice, well, hub-link is a VB Bot...

Originally posted by kp
1. my hubprotection is okey so far, but this doesn't excuse anybody to fake his myinfostring or ?

Who are you talking about here? We are talking about a BOT used by a group of hubowners to link their hubs it's not a user.
Hub-link on it's own has no ability to generate any type of client-client connection.

Originally posted by kp
2. your clients sends connectstome to a ptokax hub, ptokax doesn't check if the ip is right so it gets forwarded, bandwidth?

3. I might be wrong but lets estimate  2 only active user hub, linked together and not only chat.
one user sends a search, goes to the hub, hub sends the search to all others, all others is alos the bcdc++ to link the hubs,
this client sends the search to the other hub where is also gets forwarded to all users, (one pro so far with active searches) replies get sent to the client right away,

but with active connects, I don't see the less bandwidth used.

That is true for PtokaX and NMDCH only, all the other hubsofts I've tested with have some kind of validation on the IP# in $ConnectToMe's from users. In that case Hub-link forwards a hub-link command ($#CTM) to the destination hubs support script and it sends the $ConnectToMe to the user.

Either way the bandwidth implication is the same:
one $ConnectToMe from user 1 in hub 1 is received and sent to hub-link since the user is not on hub1.
Hub-Link forwards one command to hub 2, and hub 2 forwards it to the user.
This is the same bandwidth consumption for each of them as if the two users had been on the same hub.

Where there is a saving is when you introduce hub 3 and user 3. If User 1 is trying to connect to user 3 there is zero bandwidth consumed on hub 2 as it is not involved.
Therefore, the users on Hub 2 have access to all the users on hubs 1 and 3 without Hub 2 having to pay the full bandwidth cost of their presence in the local hub.

Note, I am not talking about cumulative bandwidth, you don't add up the bandwidth of hubs 1 + 2 + 3 and get a smaller number then a single hub with the same number of users.

You take the bandwidth of one hub with 200 users linked to other hubs with a total of 1,000 users and compare that to the bandwidth used by running a hub with 1,000 users.

[[PT]CableGuy]

Originally posted by HaArD
...You find 5 hubs with 1,000 users that want to use hub-link and we'll find out ok?...

OK ! I feel some relief , lol.


Then , i will use this thread to ask if:
There is someone willing to test the hublink "ability" and link 5 (or more) hubs , with 1000 users each ??
I know it sounds wierd , but i don't have the $$$ to have "1mbit upload lines".
In Portugal we've managed to connect 12 Hubs using PtokaX Hub-Link LUA script.
Thanks to Nuxtrja aka BlackSpark , since he's the "one to blame"...hehehe.  

Hub #	Prefix	Status		Address			Users	Shared
  1	[R?t? ?]< Connected	ratlab.no-ip.com:411		3	9,36 GB
  2	[R4E?]<   Connected	r4e.no-ip.org:411		121	7,30 TB
  3	[CL? ?]<  Connected	clmovies.no-ip.org:411		63	2,42 TB
  4	[CL? ?]<  Connected	clmovies2.no-ip.org:411		37	573,10 GB
  5	[TNL?]<   Connected	tudonosso-linux.no-ip.com:411		19	438,45 GB
  6	[Tug??]<  Connected	tuga.sytes.net:411			
  7	[DCM?]<   Connected	braga-hub.dnsalias.com:411		67	2,45 TB
  8	[Lch?]<   Connected	leech-pt.d2g.com:411			
  9	[INV?]<   Connected	invicta.no-ip.com:411		41	962,06 GB
  10  [Ov?r?]<  Not Connected	overdrive.serverbox.org:411			
  11  [Fl?t?]      <  Connected	guardadeferro.no-ip.com:411		38	754,74 GB
  12  [PTW]<          Connected	pt-world.no-ip.com:411		55	1,22 TB

[20:18]  We just broke a Total User Count record. The new record is: 541 Users.

This "values" were taken at 20:18 , 15 of april 2004.

All 12 hubs , have 128k upload stream , except R4E that have's 256k.
Hub-Link is running with one of the hubs since it's not consuming much bandwidth.
After testing Hub-Link with NMDC , SDCH and now PtokaX , i can assure you it will work.
Like HaArD  said , more bandwidth is needed since all hubs are connected into one large hub.
From my "shortest" experience , i can say that a hub consumes more 30/50% with Hub-Link.
I mean that , if my hub (alone) have 200 users , with Hub-Link i should limit to 120.
Resuming , it should work to link 5 hubs with 1000 users...if they limit the max user to 600 users.
According to "my calculations" it could reach 3000 users , in the "same hub".

This could really mean a lot Please help.  :]

[kp]

okey I get the point, actually the more hubs the better, i see the pros, weee, now wondering if it will still be a advantage if one forwards passive stuff, depends on the amount of passive users then,
well haard good that we got it straightend out.
okey last question why is your hubsoft faking share then actually, whats the use of it?
Might be for some guys who like to check into other hubs with share limit and share those users in theire hub, quite good ;).
As long as it is still faking what it isn't , one can call it faking.