Okay I was running though this scenario in my head. Imagine you have 4-6 computers at home or in your local network. It’s possible given that people have desktops, laptops, tablets and phones. Combine that with multiple people and it’s not a stretch to imagine a small local cluster emerging in every household or local area. Minimum known number of computers needed to create a safe network is 4 right? So my question is what happens to the network, one’s data, and to safecoin prices, if your local network first connects to “the big water” of the internet and global safe network and THEN for whatever reason gets CUT OFF from the internet. I mean would you suddenly become a local network, and would your local safe network monitor the fact your nodes were still plugging away and staying online even if the whole tiny network was disconnected from the rest of the net? Would you suddenly lose access to all your data? Or would duplication come into effect? And if so how would that work (given the available storage size has shrunk dramatically). And how would all this affect the price of safecoin? Would it go up, down, what? Or would it even function in such a circumstance? And then what would happen when and if one got reconnected to the larger internet again?
Sorry tons of questions there but it seems a pertinent scenario given the realistic scenario of people using SAFE possibly just being cut off from the internet. And one of the big advantages of SAFE is that it can form mesh networks. So how do such scenarios play out?
I am assuming you have at least the minimum number of nodes/vaults to operate a independent SAFE network
If your network is as small as you say then it is almost a certainty that your data is not stored on any one of your vaults. So yes you lose access to your data that was already stored.
New uploads would be distributed across XOR space in your little network. You could even earn “coins” in your network.
NOW when you reconnect
your vaults when they go off line would see the chunks they stored copied and distributed across the network.
Assuming you do not turn off at once vaults containing all the copies of a chunk then you should not lose any chunks. But with such a small network when you uploaded it is probable that vault churning will result in some loss of data.
The coins you “earned” will be rejected by the network because the “real” XOR location for the coin(s) is not in your mini network.
This is annoying but not to be unexpected. It also keeps the external hard drive makers in business.
So when I do manage to go back online don’t turn off all my devices at once. Got it.
This is worrying and confusing. Isn’t the network built to prevent this kind of loss?
This is just confusing. The “real” XOR location for the coins is not in my mini network? Even if my mini network still exists? Shouldn’t the location of the coins transfer along with the data? Otherwise how would safecoin persist throughout the network at large on a day to day basis?
Yea that sentence did not make sense. It did in my head but not in words.
It should have been reiterating the point above and that you only turn off one vault at a time., otherwise data loss could occur. Hopefully even on a mini network you will not see all copies of any chunk in one vault.
Basically if you have 128 nodes/vaults in your mini network then all the coins will be mapped to the 128 nodes/vaults and the nodes managing the coin are in your mini network.
When you rejoin the global network then the nodes handling any requests to the network are now global. Those global nodes know nothing of your “coins” and know where on the global network the coin address should reside. Basically when you attempt to use your “coins” from the mini network the global nodes will reject the attempt because they looking in global XOR space.
Consensus rules and at best you have one of the nodes from your mini network (while it was separated) in the group controlling that coin address. Your node says its on your nodes/vaults but the other 31 say its elsewhere.[quote=“Blindsite2k, post:3, topic:6827”]
Shouldn’t the location of the coins transfer along with the data? Otherwise how would safecoin persist throughout the network at large on a day to day basis?
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Safecoins are handled separately and would require consensus. They are a special SD with special processing.
But it is an interesting question, although I think its rejected the same as if someone artificially stored a SD in their vault. It lacks consensus.
Still it seems to me there should be some mechinism in place to track the transition of safecoin from a local mini network to a global network. I mean even if it became some kind of altcoin and was valued less, similar to how a local currency would be valued less than that of a national currency or something, it should still EXIST somewhere and be tradable.
If the network wishes to incentivize people to spread the network to areas where the network does not exist then it’s in the network’s best interest to tackle issues like this. Even if you created a bounty for connecting to a new area that doesn’t mean that new area is going to have stable 24/7 connection to the global safenet and if they are penalized in safecoin every time their internet goes down/connection to the global internet gets cut then they’ll be less inclined to connect or stay connected or even use the safe network.
Moreover there are areas of the world with regular power outages and internet failures. I lived in an area where the internet was constantly going down because of snow on the mountain where the internet relay was (happened a lot in winter) and it could take weeks sometimes to get it back up. Now safe COULD be a lifesaver in such a community OR it could be hell on wheels. I have a friend that lives in South Africa, and suffers from regular power outages. Again maybe all the phones might work, maybe you could get a generator or something and keep your computers running but doubtful the connection to the global internet would stay on during such a time. And again if all safecoin earned during such a time period goes POOF then it’s kind of a waste. Also how could one prep for such a time? If one loses access to all data on the global network then if one is expecting to be cut off from the global network at some point and be limited to a local network how does one prep their data for that? Is one’s only choice to put everything on external hard drives old school style? If that’s the case one would need dual copies of everything.
It could be argued that it is not the networks mandate to worry about why one’s connection keeps going down but it IS within their mandate to make sure one’s safecoin and data remain secure and functional regardless.
I disagree. If you lose your internet connection you also lose the connection with the rest of vault and you must start from scratch once the internet connection is restored.
We are in the same case as someone connect and disconnect. With non-persistent Vaults always must start without data.
And create your own safe network, with your devices, is either useless because once you start your internet connection you will be placed in others different groups starting with new data and losing the above.
And you not lose your safecoin earned. There are stored in the network and accessible as Internet come back.
If you could do that then setting the conditions in your mini network to have farming rate at 1 so every get received a “mini network” coin would be so easy.
How many people then would do that and “farm” till they had 4,000,000,000 coins , then rejoin the global network and gobble up the remaining SAFEcoin that has not been issued yet
And if you set those from the mini network as an altcoin then their worth should be almost zero since 1000’s would jump on that hack
True though I still don’t think one’s safecoins should just disapear or be lost. A drastic drop in value doesn’t mean they disappear, it would just mean they are valued less relative to the rest of the network. Like if you tied safecoin value to the proportionate size of the network it was farmed on or something. Safecoin farmed on the global network would naturally be worth MORE because it’s farmed on a global and vastly larger network than someone’s home network, or even a community network spanning an entire neighbourhood or town. But again if one were to use such a system, and put it in perspective. If one were to trade, in proportion for global safecoin it might be worth nothing but if one were to trade on the community level it might very well be worth something, given that say a network of 4-12 would not be that out classed in value say by a network of 24-50 or even 50-100. Millions and billons of nodes on the global network yes. But smaller community networks? Not as much. Also even if you’re localcoin is only worth 0.0000000000001 safecoin or something, that’s still some safecoin to add to your wallet. So like I said it shouldn’t disapear. If it just dropped in value that would be expected but going poof? That’s bad.
Come to think of it, if one did tie the value of safecoin to the proportional size of the network it was farmed on that would be important information because it would indicate the amount of resources that the new smaller network would be bringing to the larger network (or conversely the larger network bringing to the smaller one). Moreover couldn’t a simple value conversion function be written so that the safecoin on the smaller network is automatically converted to the larger network’s value BASED on each network’s proportionate size relative to one another? If the smaller network is 1/1000 the size of the global network the it’s safecoin would end up being worth 0.001 safecoin on the global network. You’d just need to do some simple math.
Moreover if your internet goes down your network size also goes down so the value of whatever safecoin you had would seem to explode. In fact it wouldn’t, just the opposite operation would take place. Safecoin earned on a network millions of times bigger has just entered a network that’s REALLY tiny. So again with a simple example. If you go from a big network to a network thats 1/1000 the size. it would be 1 safecoin * 1000 instead of divided. And this way you wouldn’t lose any coin value when you rejoined the network because if you started with 4 (global safecoins) which became 4,000 on your mini network then earned 50 on your mini network it would look like 4,050 and then rejoin the global and it’s just 4.005. But no actual value is lost.
You cannot connect to the Safe network with you own group and XOR directions. The network must give you this XOR directions otherwise attack the network will be very easy. This is a basic security feature.
But I thought smaller networks could break away and rejoin the global network without losing data. If what you say is true then how is this accomplished and data preserved?
You should make a dinstinction between a vault losing it’s data and the network losing data. Under normal circumstances you won’t be able re-join the network with existing data in your vault. The network has already duplicated that data and your copies are overly redundant. The management overhead to keep track of data in offline vaults and letting them rejoin was deemed too much, so vaults were made non-persistent.
As for the network losing data (all copies of a chunk being lost) due to catastrophic event, a protocol is envisioned that when this happens the network does allow disconnected vaults to rejoin the network with “old” data. The data managers should still have the hashes of missing chunks, so these chunks could be identified and re-integrated. This emergency state could be triggered when the average vault XOR address density suddenly falls significantly (this signifies a huge shrinkage of the network).
What data? If is data stored in the global Safe network you don’t lose data.
If is new data created in your private network, this is not SAFE data but your own private data stored in your own private network and you lose it if you rejoin the Safe network.
This makes SAFE dependent on ISPs and telco. I thought the point was decentralization away from ISPs and telco? Security, privacy and freedom. If you’re dependent on telco then you’re not free because you’re subject to their rules, inflated prices and infrastructure. Also I thought SAFE had meshnetworking capabilities. So if SAFE can form a mesh network why is it dependent on the internet? A mesh network should have no problem accepting smaller networks, that is breaking apart or joining together again. To use a Deep Space Nine metaphor a droplet becomes an ocean and an ocean becomes a droplet.
Perhaps teh better way to view it is that SAFE is not dependent on any particular ISP/set of ISPs because so many ISPs are involved.
BUT you are always dependent on some connection to the internet.
The data/SAFE will survive any (group of) ISP(s) switching off (or blocking SAFE traffic), but you must have a way to join the network.
Basically if you get disconnected from the SAFE network, as a home user, will firstly be unlikely to ever run a mini safenet and secondly if you could then you become a different network to the global SAFE and any data stored will be subject to loss when rejoining the global SAFE network.
TL;DR The SAFE network is not reliant on any particular ISP, the stored data on the SAFE network is safe
You are connecting to the network and as such are reliant on a connection to the network.
