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IPFS is the Distributed Web

ipfs.io

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Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#61

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

haadcode wrote: post #33
david-given wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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://gi…

Can I just take a moment to talk about how happy I am that the IPFS team is actually taking protocol documentation seriously, allowing for multiple implementations and the ability to understand how the protocol works?

IPFS and Matrix seem to be the only teams doing this: Dat and SSB have vague protocol documentation at best, only documenting bits of the protocol at all.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#62

Post by [deleted] »

TimJRobinson wrote: post #40

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 fin…

[deleted]

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#63

Post by FieryTransition »

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…

Id say we need a political movement to push through a technical solution to problems like this, so I agree with you on that. But I think there is definitely space for things like IPFS. Technical solutions can give more guarantees than people can, so without it, what would we really have? Promises easily broken in the future?

The problem with things like IPFS, is that they require political backing or economical incentive to really spread, otherwise they are most likely just going to remain a nice demo for a few technical people.

So IMHO technology needs to go hand in hand with economical or political incentive, but how is an open question.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#64

Post by tscs37 »

Kubuxu wrote: post #56
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…

IPNS is bug Proof of Concept that mutable content is possible in IPFS, there is long running goal of InterPlanetary Record System that would include much more complex validity schemes including revokeation.

Well, technically that's already possible by putting some form of index under the IPNS name. There is no real standard tho.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#65

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

vegabook wrote: post #50

IPFS appears here every 6 months, every 6 months the same questions get asked, the same problems get raised, the same collective sigh of bewilderment/disappointment appears to emanate from the comments, and it goes away again for another 6 months. Everybody wants something this clever and community-spirited to work, but the basic problem is, I don't want my data to be vulnerable to slow, unreliable endpoints, or peop…

...Which is why you keep your server up. It's not perfect, but it's still better than HTTP. And no doubt a cottage industry will spring up in paying nodes to pin specific data.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#66

Post by usgroup »

What I'd personally like to see is built in monetisation such that hosting and serving other peoples pages becomes a socialised cost and benefit although one would guess that such as feature would have to be deeply designed into the system itself, and cannot be added as an after-thought?

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#67

Post by empath75 »

As a devops guy, I sort of think ipfs seems more useful as a private, backend sort of solution where you trust all the nodes. I'm sort of vaguely imagining it running as a shared file system in AWS, running on docker containers.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#68

Post by mSparks »

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #59
bitJericho wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just take a look at old torrents of obscure stuff and you'll see just how resilient bit torrent is. (it isn't)

It's more resilliant than HTTP: When you grab a torrent, you can download from any seeder. With HTTP, the host is specified, so if that host goes down, good luck. In either case, if all the hosts go down and you didn't mirror it, you're screwed. However, IPFS makes it easier to mirror things.

While this sounds like it "should" be true. I think managing that will turn into something of a nightmare. IPFS is making awesome inroads into achieving that, but its not clear of the benefit over something like say freenet (other than freenet is very slow because it prefers privacy and resilience over speed).

I can see it being "really" useful as a backbone for something like Open Cobalt - http://www.opencobalt.net/ And I'm really looking forward to seeing that mature.

But the last time Open Cobalt seems to have been updated is 2010 - that's quite some time ago.

I wonder if it's being held up by patent trolls, but really all of them feels like more like a solution looking for a problem. That can take a very very long time to mature. Which is a shame.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#69

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

mSparks wrote: post #68
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more resilliant than HTTP: When you grab a torrent, you can download from any seeder. With HTTP, the host is specified, so if that host goes down, good luck. In either case, if all the hosts go down and you didn't mirror it, you're screwed. However, IPFS makes it easier to mirror things.

While this sounds like it "should" be true. I think managing that will turn into something of a nightmare. IPFS is making awesome inroads into achieving that, but its not clear of the benefit over something like say freenet (other than freenet is very slow because it prefers privacy and resilience over speed). I can see it being "really" useful as a backbone for something like Open Cobalt - http://www.opencobalt.net/…

Alpha 22 was actually released just last year, and it's still actively being worked on AFAIK. It's just that the website hasn't been updated, save for the downloads.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#70

Post by sotojuan »

bitJericho wrote: post #52
runeks wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just take a look at old torrents of obscure stuff and you'll see just how resilient bit torrent is. (it isn't)

? Private torrent trackers do this very well.
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