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IPFS is the Distributed Web

ipfs.io

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Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#31

Post by lukaslalinsky »

runeks wrote: post #30
lukaslalinsky wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I get it right, the idea is that if you want to make sure it's there one year later, you set up your own server and host the files on your own. IPFS just allows others to distribute a mirror of the files.

Why would nodes in the IPFS network voluntarily act as a load balancer for my VPS? Usually I have to pay for load balancing, so I'm a bit suspicious when someone claims I can get it for free from IPFS.

There is a lot of (mostly free) content that people are willing to distribute freely.

Take Wikipedia for example, even though it's changing very fast, I imagine a huge portion of it is static. If the latest version of each page was served via IPFS, somebody could setup a local mirror and people nearby would automatically use that.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#32

Post by runeks »

lukaslalinsky wrote: post #31
runeks wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would nodes in the IPFS network voluntarily act as a load balancer for my VPS? Usually I have to pay for load balancing, so I'm a bit suspicious when someone claims I can get it for free from IPFS.

There is a lot of (mostly free) content that people are willing to distribute freely. Take Wikipedia for example, even though it's changing very fast, I imagine a huge portion of it is static. If the latest version of each page was served via IPFS, somebody could setup a local mirror and people nearby would automatically use that.

I don't disagree with the fact that IPFS has value. I just don't like the way it's presented as a generic transport protocol that's "superior" to HTTP.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#33

Post by haadcode »

david-given wrote: post #27
haadcode wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(IPFS dev here) js-ipfs, the Javascript implementation of IPFS, has made a lot of progress in the past 6 months. It's still early but totally usable. We've been working on go-ipfs and js-ipfs interop so that browser nodes can talk to "native" nodes. It's not fully ready yet but soon. This will open a lot of doors for a more advanced network and applications using IPFS. See https://github.com/ipfs/js-ipfs . As for you…

Is there a working ipfs demo page anywhere? I've had a look around and can't find one (the closest appears to be Orbit, but the ipfs-js version is down). I'm particularly interested in using ipfs pubsub capabilities. It looks like an interesting way of allowing multiple users of a web app to talk to each other without needing (much) server side support.

Unfortunately there's no proper demo page :/ We're working on improving the docs (we know this is big issues atm).

There's an old version (from June) of Orbit at http://orbit.libp2p.io which you can try. Much has happened since and we're working on bringing the js-ipfs version Orbit back to a working state.

Re.Pubsub, I'm personally also very excited about it! :) The specs and general info are located here https://github.com/libp2p/pubsub. go-ipfs merged pubsub into master some time ago with this commit https://github.com/ipfs/go-ipfs/commit/e1c40dfa347e38bdc9812... and we're working to get it into js-ipfs here https://github.com/ipfs/js-ipfs/issues/530.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#34

Post by IanCal »

tscs37 wrote: post #16
msane wrote: post #7

If you want to tamper with content on the web, the idea that content is fingerprinted in IPFS is a huge deal. IPNS (the name service) then becomes the vulnerability, but that is also distributed.

Well, as I understood IPNS is a bit limited; it only has one resource and there is only one authority that can change content, the node in this case. It does protect against DDOS, since old content remains visible and online but if the private key is leaked or the node is malicious, it has exactly 0 protection. Even worse, if the private key is stolen, you can't do much about it unless you have DNS setup... which bri…

If the key is leaked, it means someone can alter what the name points to, but all previous versions would still be available as far as I understand it.

No content is changed, only the pointer to the "newest" data.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#35

Post by idlewords »

riffraff wrote: post #26
idlewords wrote: post #9

I worry that this is another example of throwing technology at a social and political problem. That the current web is centralized has little to do with its technical design, and everything to do with economic and structural incentives that have made it that way. It's tempting to say "start afresh", but we'll just be trading our current problems for a new set of problems IPFS introduces. It's a law of nature that pro…

> It's a law of nature that problems are always conserved. I'd agree that some social issues cannot be solved by technology, but many have been. E.g., without looking at the information age: in London before the Clean Air Act thousands people literally died of the smog, but the CAA was made possible only by increased availability of electricity and gas heating.

Your example is one where political and technical changes together helped solve a problem. You're literally citing a law as an example of a 'social issue solved by technology'.

My point is that replacing a complex technical system with a different technical system only reshuffles the set of problems that will need solving. The social and political problems that made the web what it is today won't disappear due to a redesign.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#36

Post by tscs37 »

IanCal wrote: post #34
tscs37 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, as I understood IPNS is a bit limited; it only has one resource and there is only one authority that can change content, the node in this case. It does protect against DDOS, since old content remains visible and online but if the private key is leaked or the node is malicious, it has exactly 0 protection. Even worse, if the private key is stolen, you can't do much about it unless you have DNS setup... which bri…

If the key is leaked, it means someone can alter what the name points to, but all previous versions would still be available as far as I understand it. No content is changed, only the pointer to the "newest" data.

That is true but most external or IPFS-external sites will probably want to point at the IPNS link, bookmarks are gonna point at the IPNS link, etc.

In the same way you could still use the old IP + header manipulation if someone took over a Domain in DNS, it's possible and you can use the old site but in reality you're gonna have lots of people on the malicious attacker's site.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#37

Post by idlewords »

jcoffland wrote: post #21
idlewords wrote: post #9

I worry that this is another example of throwing technology at a social and political problem. That the current web is centralized has little to do with its technical design, and everything to do with economic and structural incentives that have made it that way. It's tempting to say "start afresh", but we'll just be trading our current problems for a new set of problems IPFS introduces. It's a law of nature that pro…

> in particular the hard issue of how to re-decentralize it. Isn't that exactly the problem ipfs is attempting to address. What kind of solution do you want and why does this one not work for you? It's easier to discard someone else's idea than it is to evaluate it's merits. I'm not sure this is the solution but it looks interesting and it appears to interoperate with the existing Web via gateways even though the aut…

I'm not trying to pee all over IPFS. But it's also the case that it's easier to throw out mature, crufty old systems and start afresh. Every programmer knows this temptation.

We've had the web for twenty years now, and are just beginning to understand what it is and how it changes the world. If you're suggesting using IPFS (or any other system) as a way to expand and grow the web, I'm with you. But replacing the web means throwing out a lot of hard-won experience and intuition, in favor of a system that's bound to have its own issues down the line.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#38

Post by idlewords »

kirubakaran wrote: post #17
idlewords wrote: post #9

I worry that this is another example of throwing technology at a social and political problem. That the current web is centralized has little to do with its technical design, and everything to do with economic and structural incentives that have made it that way. It's tempting to say "start afresh", but we'll just be trading our current problems for a new set of problems IPFS introduces. It's a law of nature that pro…

What do you suggest?

There's the million-dollar question. I've been bashing my head against it for a few years now.

I think an important thing is to give everyone a say in how these large computer networks affect their lives. How to do that in the context of a broken political system isn't clear to me at all.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#39

Post by zer0gravity »

idlewords wrote: post #9

I worry that this is another example of throwing technology at a social and political problem. That the current web is centralized has little to do with its technical design, and everything to do with economic and structural incentives that have made it that way. It's tempting to say "start afresh", but we'll just be trading our current problems for a new set of problems IPFS introduces. It's a law of nature that pro…

Technology may help by making it easy for people to host/share their data. But technology is driven by politics. So we kind of need both.

The solution that I see, is transitioning from social media, where people use some centralized service to "socialize", to social infrastructure, where people run their own servers and connect to the servers of their friends making a real social network. IPFS may be a step in this direction.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#40

Post by TimJRobinson »

So I've been thinking about creating a basic site running on IPFS and here's my dillema. The hash of each page is a sha256 of the contents right? So lets say you have 3 pages A, B and C, A links to B, B links to C, C links to A. How do you create all 3 pages with correct links to each other?

When you create page A you have to have the SHA of page B, but then to create page B you have to have the SHA of page C and finally to create it you need the SHA of page A. You get into this cyclical loop where you can't generate any page and link to others. What is the solution to this problem?

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