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HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

ipfs.io

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Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#221

Post by soylentnewsorg »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #62
adfrhgeaq5hy wrote: post #58

IPFS needs to decide what it wants to be. Is it about being a decentralized caching layer? Is it about permanently storing content? Is it about replacing my web server? Is it about replacing DNS? Is it about censorship resistance? Right now it does none of those things well. The client chews through CPU and memory when seemingly doing nothing. If I try to download content, it is far slower than BitTorrent unless I go…

Imagine if we said that about web sites at the begining. The Web needs to decide what it want to be? A plaftorm to sell stuff? Contact people? Write? Listen to music?

This only sounds ridiculous because you replaced the things the OP was talking about, with your own, to make it sound ridiculous.

"Is it about being a decentralized caching layer? Is it about permanently storing content? Is it about replacing my web server? Is it about replacing DNS? Is it about censorship resistance?"

websites at the beginning did not decide to be a caching layer - they decided to be websites. they did decide to permanently store content. they did decide to use web servers. they did not decide to replace dns. they did decide to be about censorship resistance.

now imagine you put up a website, put some time into it, and it may or may not be up at a random time in the future. not a product that's usable.

Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#222

Post by FalconSensei »

noman-land wrote: post #98
vangelis wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a reason private trackers have to incentivize keeping the long tail alive.

Look at any public tracker and you'll find torrents that are very old, swarming strong.

Sometimes I try to get something that is a year old (or even 6 months) and it's stuck for weeks at 99%

Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#223

Post by kfarr »

somenewaccount1 wrote: post #28
CharlesW wrote: post #23

The author claims that IPFS enables a "permanent web" and eliminates 404-like experiences. How does IPFS guarantee that all published content will be available forever? (In my beginner-level knowledge of IPFS, this is the first I've heard that claim. It seems absurd.)

And quite annoyingly, it's the opposite of how IPFS works. IPFS nodes only cache the content as long as it's actively requested. Depending on the cache policy of the node, this can be as short as 24 hours. Yes, it could still exist on your private node that your running from your laptop, but this is the equivalent of saying that all published content is available forever because it's on your hard drive . Honestly, I…

Bingo. The marketing strongly implies permanence, but the only permanence is that same content chunks will have the same hash, not that you can always retrieve content for a given hash. Then you start digging deeper and realize you need to have a paid pinning service to ensure that your content remains available. And these pinning services are way more expensive per gb than traditional storage options.

Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#224

Post by cmckn »

FalconSensei wrote: post #220

> IPFS is actually more similar to a single bittorrent swarm exchanging git objects So definitely not permanent, right?

I’d call IPFS immutable rather than permanent. Which is a cool idea for media files at least, but isn’t very useful for something like a blog post. I think the “HTTP is obsolete” claim is a bit laughable. IPFS is essentially just bittorrent, reimagined (with comparatively no users, so not very useful yet).

Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#225

Post by nappy »

wpietri wrote: post #181
Jasper_ wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the web wasn't about listening to music at the start! It started with organizing documents on a network, at CERN. And it took over existing document platforms by adding a simple point-and-click browser user interface to them, inspired by HyperCard (where do you think the "hyperlink" got its name?) The modern, more economic web, wouldn't come until Netscape added form fields and cookies, at the behest of some of t…

Exactly. To get the beginnings of real adoption, a technology has to do something better. A specific thing. Better enough that people switch. The early web's competition was things like FTP, Gopher, and email-driven apps (e.g., Listservs, the Usenet Oracle). Plus paper-based stuff, like department phone books, mailing documents around, etc. It was hugely better than any of those for many common uses, so adoption was…

and much better, to justify switching costs.

Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#226

Post by zamadatix »

nephanth wrote: post #169
saurik wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If millions of people were using IPFS... ...then IPFS would just get even slower and use even more resources to manage the index and find content as I am pretty sure the DHT they are using doesn't scale the way you seem to think it does.

Why ? iirc the time I studied them, DHTs scale pretty well (like log(size of the network) complexity for everything).

log(size of the network) still means it gets slower as it gets larger without any aforementioned speed advantages for all but the IPFS Google popularity equivalent class content.

Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#227

Post by joshuaschmidt »

sam345 wrote: post #213
Taek wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you had a chance to try Skynet? It provides all of the same features as IPFS, but it's also a lot more performant and higher uptime. You wouldn't need a centralized node that you run yourself.

Do you have any good links to Skynet? I could just find an old GitHub repo. Is it in active use ?

I found this, I think it's what @Taek's referring to - https://siasky.net

Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#228

Post by cmrdporcupine »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #91
Jasper_ wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the web wasn't about listening to music at the start! It started with organizing documents on a network, at CERN. And it took over existing document platforms by adding a simple point-and-click browser user interface to them, inspired by HyperCard (where do you think the "hyperlink" got its name?) The modern, more economic web, wouldn't come until Netscape added form fields and cookies, at the behest of some of t…

> inspired by HyperCard (where do you think the "hyperlink" got its name?) I'm as much of a HyperCard fan as (almost) anyone else, but that is almost certainly not where the term "hyperlink" comes from. Ted Nelson used the word "link" back in the mid 1960s, in the context of another coinage of his, "hypertext". The historical record is already a little unclear about whether or not he was using hyperlink that early, b…

I remember a whole fascinating section about various hypertext system in a mid-80s issue of Byte. I spent hours pouring over the screenshots in it.

EDIT: here's a good summary article of pre-WWW hypertext systems from the 80s https://fibery.io/blog/hypertext-tools-from-the-80s/

Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#229

Post by drdeca »

sodality2 wrote: post #208
drdeca wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what sense is it not a literal hash? Because it had the prefix at the start to specify what hash to use and the length?

"of the content" meaning it's not just a sha-N of the file. Unless I misremember the IPFS protocol.

Thanks! I was thinking too vaguely of “hash”, and didn’t think about the requirement that the hash of something large and the hash of that thing but with a big chunk of it replaced with , uh, the hash or some kind of digest of that large bit, be different.

Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#230

Post by drdeca »

namibj wrote: post #194
drdeca wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what sense is it not a literal hash? Because it had the prefix at the start to specify what hash to use and the length?

Because it chunks, it's more similar to a merkle tree than a plain hash.

Thanks, I didn’t think of that
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