[Opensim-dev] The essence of "grid"

[Thomas Grimshaw]

I know i'm pretty much a newcomer to this scene, but i'd like to throw 
my two pence into the midst.

First of all, i'm not a big fan of beaurocracatic discussions about the 
theory behind "what a grid is"; principally because we're not building a 
grid, we're building a platform - a platform which may have reaches far 
different from any scopes and concepts which we individually may retain.

One thing which really provoked a reaction from me in Melanie's response 
was this: 

 "being forced to share asset and inventory servers"

Is that really such a bad thing? I have to be honest, I have not met a 
single person in second life, OSgrid, reactiongrid, openlife, k-grid, 
who has said to me "You know what, what we really need is asset 
segregation and to make content harder to find."

Here's my viewpoint, in a summary.

- Security is a good thing.  Real security, as in, stuff which prevents 
attacks, helps to keep the grid stable, etc.

- Please let's not provide a platform which promotes segregation. If 
you're really looking for the definition of a "grid", i believe there is 
a definite conflict of interest with this approach.

- Let's look to the future, and not base the way we think on constructs 
already in place. No matter committed you think we are to the "linden 
designed protocol" - things can change in a matter of days.

- I can easily predict the availability in the future of "asset farms" 
which are linked in to multiple grids.  I think this is the right 
approach, please don't push things in the other direction.

~T

Melanie wrote:
> I believe that, for technical purposes, a "grid" should indeed be 
> seen as a trust domain. That was what the protocol was designed for 
> and bending it to anything else would be very painful and not 
> entirely successful, feature-wise. The Linden-designed protocol 
> elements are best suited to that situation, and the HG ones are best 
> suited to untrusted connections.
> OSGrid really does straddle the fence in many respects, but I think 
> it will change over time and become HG connected rather than 
> grid-structured. The server-centric region handoff system doesn't 
> allow for any level of content protection and being forced to share 
> asset and inventory servers is no longer needed in the new 
> architecture that Diva and I hashed out last night.
> We would, indeed, arrive at a secure Hypergrid, and a true 3d 
> internet, much sooner if we made that distinction and considered a 
> "grid" as we know it today a trust domain.
>
>  From that follows:
> Region = Webpage
> Grid = Website
> Hypergrid = Internet
>
> The operator of a complex, multipage website needs trust between 
> it's pages, and so the operator of a complex HG site with many 
> regions needs trust between them.
>
> Melanie
>
>
> 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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>>
>>     
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