A Peer-to-Peer Platform for Reliable, Secure Communication

Introduction

ePOST is a cooperative, serverless email system. Each user contributes a small amount of storage and network bandwidth in exchange for access to email service.  ePOST provides

• A serverless,  peer-to-peer email service
• Secure email emong ePOST users
  
• An organically scaling service that requires no dedicated hardware
• Very high availability and data durability
  
• Compatibility with POP/IMAP clients, SMTP mail servers
  

Why Are We Building ePOST?

Peer-to-peer systems have gained wide popularity, partially due to their self-scaling properties and their resilience to failures.  However, most existing peer-to-peer systems provide best-effort services, whose availability is not critical to their users.  A question is whether peer-to-peer systems can provide service that users depend on in their daily lives and work.  We have deployed ePOST to show that a cooperative peer-to-peer system can provide availability, reliability and security that matches or exceeds  that of server-based solutions, while reducing hardware cost and administrative overhead.

How Can I Use ePOST?

We welcome new ePOST users. If you are interested in trying ePOST, ensure that your computer meets the requirements below, and then go to the Download page to download the latest version of ePOST.

• You must be running either Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, or a flavor of Linux.
• You need a recent (>= 1.4.2) version of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed on your computer. This is available from Sun for all supported platforms. Note that Java 1.5 is currently in beta support.
• If you are behind a firewall, you must open up connections for your ePOST node. This is usually on port 10001, for both UDP and TCP protocols. Information on how to do this is available on the Firewall page.
• If you are behind a NAT, you must set up port forwarding for your ePOST node - for more information, see the FAQ.