Very complete description of safe network!!!
A few details to be corrected though:
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What you call group is now called section. See the change of terminology in MaidSafe Dev Update – December 6, 2016. A group is now a subset of a section of exactly 8 nodes. It contains nodes that are the closest ones to a specific address.
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What you call section is in fact called prefix (this is what you defined as “the leading bits of their identifier”)
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Section size is >= 8 but is not necessarily <= 16 because a section is split in two only if both halves are greater or equal than 11. Meaning that it splits when it reaches 22 if it is well balanced, but can grow above 22 if it is unbalanced. The margin (11 – 8 = 3) is a hysteresis factor added to avoid a merge quickly after a split.
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Permissions are not associated with specific keys but are applicable to all keys of a Mutable Data.