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Decentralisation: the next big step for the world wide web

theguardian.com

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Re: Decentralisation: the next big step for the world wide web

#141

Post by r_c_a_d »

gsich wrote: post #128
rspeer wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the key difference remains: there aren't many personal computers that we leave plugged in and turned on 24/7 anymore.

This was never the case.

I presume you mean "never the case for many people". As in "most people never left their PC on 24/7". That may well be true.

I used to run a couple of minecraft servers for my kids. Judging by how amazing their friends thought that was... I don't think there were many other people in the town doing that.

On the other hand, I still have a raspberry pi running 24/7 to this day.

Re: Decentralisation: the next big step for the world wide web

#142

Post by ace_of_spades »

amelius wrote: post #137
sixdimensional wrote: post #48

It strikes me that, if we are ever to expand the Internet into space on a universal scale (a la Vint Cerf and "delay tolerant networking", as an example), the inherent physics problems involved with distances and connectivity in space would probably make decentralization an absolute requirement. I mean, it seems it would not be uncommon for there to be a "local net" and a "universal peer-to-peer or mesh network net".…

On a related note, I'm wondering how distributed systems that rely on atomic clocks (e.g. Google Spanner) would work in the space era, given that relativity says that there's no such thing as a global clock.

Not an expert by any means but I would imagine you simply prefix your time with a specific „large-sclae time zone“ that you are moving in, e.g., it could be earth, another planet or your spacecraft. Wouldn‘t solve it completly but seems to be a pragmatic solution that could work alright for most cases.

However, a total ordering of events seems plausible only from the relative perspective of an observer and we would need to figure out, how to think about how things like transfer duration affect each oberservers understanding of ordering.

Re: Decentralisation: the next big step for the world wide web

#143

Post by aaron695 »

sixdimensional wrote: post #48

It strikes me that, if we are ever to expand the Internet into space on a universal scale (a la Vint Cerf and "delay tolerant networking", as an example), the inherent physics problems involved with distances and connectivity in space would probably make decentralization an absolute requirement. I mean, it seems it would not be uncommon for there to be a "local net" and a "universal peer-to-peer or mesh network net".…

> make decentralization an absolute requirement. I mean, it seems it would not be uncommon for there to be a "local net" and a "universal peer-to-peer or mesh network net".

It is the absolute opposite.

Lets say we have a lot of people on Mars or even the moon, it 100% logical all internet will go through one pipe and be cached locally.

Goodness me. Would we really expect the super super super expensive outposts would foot the bill to peer to peer other peoples traffic? Hard enough getting it to happen on earth.

Re: Decentralisation: the next big step for the world wide web

#144

Post by zaarn »

7373737373 wrote: post #84
zmw wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That indeed is a fundamental difference. But on second thought I got confused. Source independence, content addressable are nice and all, but we don't build static websites that always have same hashes; "Ubuntu Server 18.04.1 ISO" could be ipfs:// , but even "latest Ubuntu Server 18.04.x ISO" couldn't be that. You still need to query the origin server (or client, whatever you call it), the central authority, to get t…

I'd say that most websites are static enough to be pinned. With the others, the main problem is content determinism. If the same website renders differently on different platforms, they will have different hashes. The only reliable way to store them is in "unrendered" form. Which prevents the inclusion of external resources, something that most single-page interactive websites rely on. Naming is a consensus problem.…

Most websites; maybe.

Most popular websites; unlikely. Even HN isn't static enough to be pinned considering there is a new comment about once a minute or so.

Re: Decentralisation: the next big step for the world wide web

#145

Post by colordrops »

amelius wrote: post #137
sixdimensional wrote: post #48

It strikes me that, if we are ever to expand the Internet into space on a universal scale (a la Vint Cerf and "delay tolerant networking", as an example), the inherent physics problems involved with distances and connectivity in space would probably make decentralization an absolute requirement. I mean, it seems it would not be uncommon for there to be a "local net" and a "universal peer-to-peer or mesh network net".…

On a related note, I'm wondering how distributed systems that rely on atomic clocks (e.g. Google Spanner) would work in the space era, given that relativity says that there's no such thing as a global clock.

Couldn't you account for relativistic effects and adjust accordingly?

Re: Decentralisation: the next big step for the world wide web

#146

Post by synctext »

PinkMilkshake wrote: post #102
antpls wrote: post #39

When we think about decentralization, we sometime think about uncontrolled extreme decentralization. That's the ideal : no single point of failure, with everyone hosting their data where they want, and deciding who access what about them. Practically, as pointed in the article, there are laws to comply with and those are IMHO the biggest lock to decentralization. The fair middle ground between extreme centralization…

> What we need is a framework, or a backbone, that allows people to easily create new federated-native apps ("dapps") without thinking about consensus issues, protocols versioning, and with native laws compliance. I agree that this is probably the way forward. The only downside is how your identity is tied to the service provider you choose. It was a PITA when Lavabit went down and I lost that email address.

> The only downside is how your identity is tied to the service provider you choose.

Fully agree with this. The link to identity is not often brought up. I run a university lab focussed on re-decentralisation of the Internet as a day job. We focus on identity & p2p + trust.

Beaker browser is impressive early work focussed on the raw bit transport. It re-uses DNS for global discovery, its hard to do everything decentralised at once. How to do global search on a decentralised Twitter or spam control?

The hard issue we need to solve in the coming decade is the governance of such systems. Ideally it would rule itself. Definition of a self-governance system as: a distributed system in which autonomous individuals can collectively exercise all of the necessary functions of power without intervention from any authority which they cannot themselves alter.

Re: Decentralisation: the next big step for the world wide web

#147

Post by amelius »

wslh wrote: post #54

There is an easy contrarian view about decentralization: even if a decentralized protocol wins, at the end it is all about the UI/UX/Aggregation which clearly cannot be decentralized. For example, OpenBazaar can be great but the one who develop the best UI and search engine will win.

There is a semi-centralized solution: make search run on a handful of central machines, and check if the results of (e.g.) two of them match.

Re: Decentralisation: the next big step for the world wide web

#148

Post by gunnihinn »

amelius wrote: post #137
sixdimensional wrote: post #48

It strikes me that, if we are ever to expand the Internet into space on a universal scale (a la Vint Cerf and "delay tolerant networking", as an example), the inherent physics problems involved with distances and connectivity in space would probably make decentralization an absolute requirement. I mean, it seems it would not be uncommon for there to be a "local net" and a "universal peer-to-peer or mesh network net".…

On a related note, I'm wondering how distributed systems that rely on atomic clocks (e.g. Google Spanner) would work in the space era, given that relativity says that there's no such thing as a global clock.

I suppose those continue working fine in very local systems (contained in a ball of a few light-seconds radius) whose components move at speeds where relativistic effects can be discarded. Drop those constraints and you also need to drop even system-local globality because of relativity.

Re: Decentralisation: the next big step for the world wide web

#149

Post by vezycash »

IMO, there are two key barriers to a decentralized internet (other factors are minor in comparison.)

(1) IPv4 (2) Bandwidth limits

IPv6 makes NAT unnecessary. With IP scarcity gone, IP addresses might become permanent like phone numbers.

ISPs are currently making money off fixed IP addresses. Market forces would change that eventually.

Re: Decentralisation: the next big step for the world wide web

#150

Post by gunnihinn »

gunnihinn wrote: post #148
amelius wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a related note, I'm wondering how distributed systems that rely on atomic clocks (e.g. Google Spanner) would work in the space era, given that relativity says that there's no such thing as a global clock.

I suppose those continue working fine in very local systems (contained in a ball of a few light-seconds radius) whose components move at speeds where relativistic effects can be discarded. Drop those constraints and you also need to drop even system-local globality because of relativity.

You _could_ introduce the One True Lamport Clock, and as long as you're in its light cone you can get global syncronization, but that comes at the cost of having to learn a lot about patience.
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