[Opensim-dev] The essence of "grid"

[John Sheridan]

In a traditional sense yes, I'd say a grid would be defined as a trusted 
authority - at least the standard Linden style of grid where all sims / 
servers are administered by the same organization and access to the grid 
services from externally connecting regions is disallowed.  Although in 
regards to an open style of grid such as OSGrid I can't really imagine 
how the grid operator could act as a trust authority as each individual 
sim owner would have full control of their own sim's database as well 
unfeathered access to whatever assets may be kept on the grid's 
servers.  Surely a terms of service could be put into place, although 
that wouldn't stop someone from bringing a sim online with a disposable 
IP address, dumping it full of assets, then saving it all out to an oar 
to do with as they wish. 

My initial thought for a situation such as this would be to 1 - allow 
the option of an entire grid to be treated as a trust authority which 
handles closed off / Linden style grids, and 2 - to allow sims that are 
connected to a grid the same ability as a standalone would have to 
declare themselves as a trust authority, which technically covers both 
standalones and open grids such as OSGrid. 

Thanks, :)

 - John / Orion

Diva Canto wrote:
> As I zoom in on issues of trust and security, I'm getting to the point 
> where I need a sharp definition of "grid". What is a grid, besides being 
> a map/lookup service and a user accounts service?
>
> a) nothing more than that
> b) a trust domain
>
> If we choose b) then we need to think about OSGrid-like grids. How can 
> we trust that a collection of regions administered by different people 
> will behave? Can OSGrid-like grids survive without ToS being signed 
> between the grid operator and the region operators? What if the ToS is 
> such that it delegates to the region admins any liability on bad things 
> happening in their regions? -- that leaves the user with no central 
> authority to complain, which is as good as not having a trust domain.
>
> If OSGrid-like grids (i.e. no contracts, or very loose ones; just a map 
> service) are to exist, then it's clear that b) doesn't hold in general. 
> It means that there can be grids that are simply a collection of regions 
> that come together in virtual space, but whose trustworthiness as a 
> whole doesn't exist.
>
> The Hypergrid is specifically designed to cross trust boundaries. Should 
> the OSGrid-like grids become HG-ed sims that share the same map, and let 
> "grids" be, fully, trust domains?
>
> You may think I'm getting into philosophy, but this is critical for the 
> technical work I'm doing right now related to authentication, 
> server-side vs client-side authority, etc. If we can assume that a 
> "grid" is a uniform trust domain with a central authority, things will 
> be simpler in many ways. If not, things will be a bit more complicated.
>
> Thoughts?
>
>
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