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Dropbox traffic infrastructure: Edge network

blogs.dropbox.com

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Re: Dropbox traffic infrastructure: Edge network

#41

Post by rakoo »

microtonal wrote: post #31
callumjones wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has to be HN at its worst. Reducing a complicated file sharing and collaboration tool to an insecure and highly technical protocol. Dropbox: I can upload a file super easily and share a simple & secure link with someone who just has a web browser. FTP: I can upload a file to an FTP server I've either configured on my server or rented online. I'll then provide an FTP url to friend with instructions on how they sh…

This is a parody. From the original Dropbox announcement on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 Unfortunately, similar parodies are posted as a reaction to many Dropbox-related posts, so gets a bit repetitive.

It does indeed, but I feel like it's an important part of HN (some people arrive here allthc time) and retrospecting about it is something all engineers should do, so I felt the need to point at I again.

For completion sake and closer on the story, here's the same account 11 years later reflecting on himself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16661824

Re: Dropbox traffic infrastructure: Edge network

#42

Post by meritt »

wongarsu wrote: post #40
meritt wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_computing Wikipedia's definition primarily focuses on the local/IoT version as a distinctly different from utilizing a CDN.

I wouldn't define a CDN as edge computing either, since computation is not the purpose of a CDN. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_delivery_network contains > Most CDN providers will provide their services over a varying, defined, set of PoPs [...]. These sets of PoPs can be called "edges", "edge nodes" or "edge networks" as they would be the closest edge of CDN assets to the end user" There's also https://en.wik…

So "Edge" is the new "Cloud". Got it.

Re: Dropbox traffic infrastructure: Edge network

#45

Post by dpcx »

fireattack wrote: post #43
simonw wrote: post #22

TIL about https://github-debug.com/ and https://www.fastly-debug.com/ and https://dropbox-debug.com/ - neat pattern.

If you have trouble to connect to github.com how you're going to "git clone https://github.com/[xxx]" ?

Because it's possible that you can't clone from the https endpoint but you can from the git endpoint, which helps them (and you) debug the cause.

Re: Dropbox traffic infrastructure: Edge network

#46

Post by gbrayut »

acdha wrote: post #14
meritt wrote: post #7

I wonder which definition of "Edge" is going to win out because right now it's being used interchangeably to mean either: 1) CDN or 2) On-premise machines/IoT.

I've never heard it used with that second definition. It's pretty consistently used to refer to running close to the user, as opposed to having a big data center which most of your users aren't near. The second definition could be a confusion of ownership — i.e. are you paying a CDN to do higher-level service or running the services yourself?

I work on an Edge Platform team as part of an Edge Foundation that manages both external CDN and internal Tier 1 WAF/Ingress systems. We do Edge computing at both CDN and Tier 1 layers via tenant plugins running LUA/go. We also have an SDN team building Tier 2 solutions, so basically systems operating at the edge of each layer of the HTTP stack.

Re: Dropbox traffic infrastructure: Edge network

#47

Post by acdha »

wongarsu wrote: post #38
acdha wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, right, I'd forgotten about https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 It's definitely comical in retrospect for not even understanding the state of the technology at the time.

I know the comment is today taken as the high of HN negativity, but to me the comment seems very reasonable. - Back then there were FTP clients that automatically kept server and client in sync, which is the main feature of Dropbox. Dropbox adds a website, but Windows Explorer already supports FTP nativly. Of course easily creating shared links turned out to be a major thing, but I don't think we can blame people for…

I was just thinking that having used various FTP/SFTP-as-a-filesystem, not to mention NFS and SMB, over a decade or so before Dropbox arrived made the sales pitch immediately obvious: do you want everything to be slow and unreliable, with frequent jank even on fast networks, or not?

Re: Dropbox traffic infrastructure: Edge network

#48

Post by acdha »

gsich wrote: post #26
wmf wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cynical HN commenters from a decade ago. It's pretty hilarious in retrospect.

To be fair: FTP makes it pretty easy to see if a file is uploaded. With Dropbox you always have to double check ...

How frequently do you find their UI badging to be inaccurate? I’m not sure I ever have caught it reporting the wrong state.

Re: Dropbox traffic infrastructure: Edge network

#49

Post by PuffinBlue »

mitjak wrote: post #37
rakoo wrote: post #3

Who would have thought a simple FTP-on-some-server would have been so complicated. Thanks for the post! I'm eagerly waiting for the blog post about how bazel and torrents are used.

I'm also curious how torrents are used and why.

I would guess that they do something similar to Facebook.

Ars covered what Facebook do about 6 years ago, and even then I think they'd been using it for a few years:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/04/exclu...

I believe Twitter does something similar too.

Re: Dropbox traffic infrastructure: Edge network

#50

Post by [deleted] »

meritt wrote: post #16
acdha wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never heard it used with that second definition. It's pretty consistently used to refer to running close to the user, as opposed to having a big data center which most of your users aren't near. The second definition could be a confusion of ownership — i.e. are you paying a CDN to do higher-level service or running the services yourself?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_computing Wikipedia's definition primarily focuses on the local/IoT version as a distinctly different from utilizing a CDN.

[deleted]
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