Does HTTP have to lose for IPFS to win? Except the cost argument, none of the points in this article prevent sites from serving things via HTTP with IPFS metadata for the long term (though I don't know how that would play with advertising).
HTTP is obsolete. It's time for the Distributed Web (2015)
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Re: HTTP is obsolete. It's time for the Distributed Web (2015)
#22Ugh, servers! Except, you're gonna have to have servers unless you've got the entire web backed up on everyone's computer. Otherwise, you don't and can't know how many copies of a page or other file are out there. But who's going to pay for servers to retain random peoples' and companies' web detritus? This whole project exists because that's not feasible in the long term... It's not "crazy", it's pure, thoughtless h…
> It's not "crazy", it's pure, thoughtless hype.
What a well thought out argument, thanks so much for your insight.
Re: HTTP is obsolete. It's time for the Distributed Web (2015)
#23Ugh, servers! Except, you're gonna have to have servers unless you've got the entire web backed up on everyone's computer. Otherwise, you don't and can't know how many copies of a page or other file are out there. But who's going to pay for servers to retain random peoples' and companies' web detritus? This whole project exists because that's not feasible in the long term... It's not "crazy", it's pure, thoughtless h…
I can purchase a droplet on digital ocean than has gigabit and a terabyte of transfer every month for $5. A terabyte is more than enough content for me. I am sure most people could afford that to manage their interneting.
>I can purchase a droplet on digital ocean than has gigabit and a terabyte of transfer every month for $5
>I am sure most people could afford that to manage their interneting
And before the spec has even seen real adoption, we've already seen it centralize into a few major providers.
A bit tongue-in-cheek, but it's a real issue. HTTP isn't the reason things are centralizing so much as economies of scale and convenience are. I see nothing about IPFS that fundamentally changes that, and think we'd likely see similar centralization over time.
Git, one of the inspirational technologies, is in theory distributed as well and in practice hyper-centralized to only a few major providers.
Re: HTTP is obsolete. It's time for the Distributed Web (2015)
#24Ugh, servers! Except, you're gonna have to have servers unless you've got the entire web backed up on everyone's computer. Otherwise, you don't and can't know how many copies of a page or other file are out there. But who's going to pay for servers to retain random peoples' and companies' web detritus? This whole project exists because that's not feasible in the long term... It's not "crazy", it's pure, thoughtless h…
- Even assuming all this, a hybrid approach of HTTP + IPFS (or DAT) is still better than what we have now, since IPFS is essentially a worldwide CDN for static files.(Sorry: an inter-planetary one.)
- The content-addressing aspect makes it perfect for distributing commonly used libraries.
- We already cache all this content locally. What a waste! Why do I have to fetch jQuery from fricking California when it's sitting on my girlfriend's phone in the other room?
- This extends beyond the web: think about the benefits (both in security, practicality, and performance) of content addressing introduced into package managers (take it one step further even: combine this idea with the new move towards reproducible builds (https://reproducible-builds.org) and package managers like guix and nix and things get really interesting).
- It's actually easier to use for the average person. If you don't think this is the case I propose a simple experiment: download the beaker browser and set up a simple static site. I recently did this. It really is one-click hosting! Considering how complicated web hosting is to the average person (ever try to walk a friend through setting up a website? not. fun.) -- people would love to be able to set up personal websites this easily... and for free?
- As others have mentioned, there are many solutions being worked on for the mirroring of data (Filecoin etc).
- For websites that are visited regularly, this is not an issue -- all content is cached temporarily. It suddenly becomes basically free to serve an audience of millions... again: with one click.
- If history serves as precedent, if it does fail it would be in spite of being an objectively superior, practical solution. Getting a critical mass of people on this thing is the hardest problem to figure out. -- I suspect package management, academic data are the best place to start, then one-click personal hosting -- not even think about "apps" for now.
- Didn't you just read the web is about to go permanent? Do you really want to be archived for all history as one more nay-sayer? ;)
Re: HTTP is obsolete. It's time for the Distributed Web (2015)
#25Ugh, servers! Except, you're gonna have to have servers unless you've got the entire web backed up on everyone's computer. Otherwise, you don't and can't know how many copies of a page or other file are out there. But who's going to pay for servers to retain random peoples' and companies' web detritus? This whole project exists because that's not feasible in the long term... It's not "crazy", it's pure, thoughtless h…
> who's going to pay for servers to retain random peoples' and companies' web detritus? You mean Filecoin? Anyway, I'm also a skeptic about this model but I do think there is a sliver of chance that it may work. There ALWAYS is a sliver of chance that something crazy may work. That's how it's always been. IBM laughed when personal computer vendors and OS creators thought that they will put computers on everyone's des…
First, let me say that I think that IPFS is a good idea and that it has applications that are useful now. However, if I interpret the parent's "thoughtless hype" as "hopelessly naive", I'm pretty much in agreement.
Checkout Freenet[0]. And while trying to maintain anonymity makes the problem even more difficult, there are fundamental problems in Freenet that make it basically unusable (mostly around cache coherency and latency). Freenet has been around since Ian Clarke's paper about distributed information storage and retrieval systems in 1999. They haven't managed to fix these fundamental problems in nearly 20 years of trying. I see absolutely no discussion of the same problems in IPFS (though abandoning anonymity is a good start).
It's one thing to say, "Hey distributed file system -- awesome". Then you can build all the easy bits and say, "Well, maybe cache coherency and latency won't be a big problem". But now look at what IPFS has to say about cache coherency on their wiki [1]. There is nothing at all that identifies or addresses the problems they will run into -- just a definition of the term and some links to random resources.
It's all well and good to say, "Eventual consistency", but what about guarantees of consistency? If I'm a vendor and I have a 1 day special offer, can I get a guarantee that caches will be consistent before my special offer is over? How do you deal with network partitions? Etc, etc, etc.
Before you start calling HTTP "obsolete", how about solving these kinds of problems? I have absolutely no problem with projects like these. They are awesome and I encourage the authors to keep working towards solving hard problems like the above. But announcing your solution before you've even realised that the problem is hard is pretty much the epitome of naivety.
[0] - https://freenetproject.org/
[1] - https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1m...
Re: HTTP is obsolete. It's time for the Distributed Web (2015)
#26Ugh, servers! Except, you're gonna have to have servers unless you've got the entire web backed up on everyone's computer. Otherwise, you don't and can't know how many copies of a page or other file are out there. But who's going to pay for servers to retain random peoples' and companies' web detritus? This whole project exists because that's not feasible in the long term... It's not "crazy", it's pure, thoughtless h…
What do you think of this actual proposal? You absolutely do NOT need the whole web replicated on every computer.
Re: HTTP is obsolete. It's time for the Distributed Web (2015)
#27It's kind of funny that the example link to a "permanent" object still returns a 404 ("ipfs resolve -r /ipns/QmTodvhq9CUS9hH8rirt4YmihxJKZ5tYez8PtDmpWrVMKP: Could not resolve name.") I totally want the web to magically be distributed too, but clearly not even the author is bothering to host their IPFS content anymore...
> IPNS isn’t done yet, so if that link doesn’t work, don’t fret. Just know that I will be able to change what that pubkeyhash points to, but the pubkeyhash will always remain the same. When it’s done, it will solve the site updating problem.
Re: HTTP is obsolete. It's time for the Distributed Web (2015)
#28Ugh, servers! Except, you're gonna have to have servers unless you've got the entire web backed up on everyone's computer. Otherwise, you don't and can't know how many copies of a page or other file are out there. But who's going to pay for servers to retain random peoples' and companies' web detritus? This whole project exists because that's not feasible in the long term... It's not "crazy", it's pure, thoughtless h…
Because IPFS uses a distributed hash table like Bittorent, you don't have to know where stuff is--that's the problem with the HTTP, which is location addressed. IPFS is content addressed—the hash is the location.
You never host anything unless you want to; you don't host random stuff.
It's 2017, if you're using Google Docs or an instant messenger program and lose access to the backbone, you can't communicate with somebody who's in the same room with you. That's kinda silly. IPFS solves that issue.
IPFS is censorship resistance because it's a distributed protocol that can use a variety of transports. If I run example.com, people can DDOS it; it's much harder to do that when hundreds or thousands of nodes have the same content and you can connect to any of them. Sure worked in Turkey: http://observer.com/2017/05/turkey-wikipedia-ipfs/.
Filecoin is a cryptocurrency that will be mined by providing storage via IPFS.
Folks may want to read the white paper before they make assumptions about what's possible and what's hype: https://filecoin.io/filecoin.pdf
Re: HTTP is obsolete. It's time for the Distributed Web (2015)
#29wipes tear from eye
Re: HTTP is obsolete. It's time for the Distributed Web (2015)
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can purchase a droplet on digital ocean than has gigabit and a terabyte of transfer every month for $5. A terabyte is more than enough content for me. I am sure most people could afford that to manage their interneting.
>I can purchase a droplet on digital ocean than has gigabit and a terabyte of transfer every month for $5 >I am sure most people could afford that to manage their interneting And before the spec has even seen real adoption, we've already seen it centralize into a few major providers. A bit tongue-in-cheek, but it's a real issue. HTTP isn't the reason things are centralizing so much as economies of scale and convenien…
Distributed technology keeps centralized providers honest. If github got complacent their customers could migrate their most important data in a very short time.