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HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)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Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#251

Post by dvcrn »

jeroenhd wrote: post #3

I like IPFS, I really do, but whenever I try to use it, it's either too slow to become usable or sometimes it plain doesn't work. I pinned a whole bunch of files on IPFS a while back to experiment with it and the system seems to work, but every time I try to fetch those resources from a location that hasn't cached the content yet, it takes several seconds to show me the HTML/JSON/PNG files. HTTP may be inefficient fo…

I keep IPFS companion turned on constantly but when I hit a site that's getting loaded through IPFS it often takes so long that I end up turning IPFS off so it just fetches it from the central server

Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#252

Post by anaganisk »

jimpick wrote: post #128

People hating on IPFS DHT performance probably aren’t using the experimental accelerated DHT client. https://github.com/ipfs/go-ipfs/blob/master/docs/experimenta...

Probably because it’s experimental and is not mainstream yet.

Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#253

Post by delaaxe »

Jasper_ wrote: post #64
delaaxe wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about IPFS but Arweave solved the "permanent" part by asking nodes to periodically prove that they're actually storing what they're supposed to be storing: https://www.arweave.org/

What happens when the servers then fail to provide that promise? Isn't the data lost?

If the servers do provide the proof, they get a reward, if they can't, they loose part of their collateral (also called stake).

Re: HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015)

#254

Post by anaganisk »

As long as there are no actual, native iOS, android and PC Apps built on top of IPFS or even an access GUI or interface with browser on those platforms, IPFS can stop dreaming of replacing HTTP. Apart from mere 1-2% of world population who use internet, no one else is going to download a binary and run a CLI, and visit 127.0.0.1:8080/ipfs. For majority of people chrome is a gateway to internet (for them Http is a prefix u put in-front of a url) unless ipfs goes to that level, http is as relevant as ever. I know software devs who don’t know they could access files from browser via file:// protocol.

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

#255

Post by linuxandrew »

Gigachad wrote: post #146
abecedarius wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BitTorrent was invented to cut down the scope of an earlier IPFS-ish system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnet_(peer-to-peer_network)#Ev... It's reasonable to try again at the bigger goals now that there's more infrastructure / theoretical progress / audience.

I see this kind of claim posted a lot, but what does IPFS actually do that torrents do not? What is a new use case which has been enabled?

In terms of the protocol IPNS, DNSLink and PubSub come to mind. You can publish things that change over time.

IPFS also does some deduplication against the data when you publish things.

In terms of the software, browser integration, which there isn't a whole lot around for BitTorrent AFAIK.

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

#256

Post by Kiro »

democracy wrote: post #167

Oh it's one of the "cryptocurrency" solution looking for a problem to solve? Thanks, no, thanks! :)

No, it's not. IPFS has nothing to do with cryptocurrencies (Filecoin was added as a separate incentive layer but is not part of IPFS). Sad that even technologists immediately associate decentralization with cryptocurrencies.

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

#257

Post by neiman »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #183
neiman wrote: post #179

The "permanent web" goal didn't survive that well. I work closely with IPFS since 2018, and it's not part of the narative by now. The distributed part is still going strong, but in my eyes distributed (or decentralization) should be a tool, not a goal. The question is which kind of Internet we want to build with these distributed infrastructure? If it's just cloning the current Internet, then I don't see what it brin…

So the minority of users see/talk about/hear what the majority wants? So they are forced just fork it and form their own distributed network independent and isolated from the internet at large?

That's not how democracy works.

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

#258

Post by jl6 »

Is there an IPFS server that can run within a fixed memory budget? Last time I tried the Go implementation, its memory usage increased steadily over the course of 72 hours and then got killed when it approached a gigabyte (which was all the VM’s memory).

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

#259

Post by thomashop »

tauwauwau wrote: post #236
thomashop wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have preferred IPFS to do the storage and propagation of data really well and not implemented stuff like IPNS in the core. To me this should be a separate codebase. And I see this in other features they have been including too. I'm using IPFS quite heavily to store content generated on https://pollinations.ai but there is no way I could run it without a centralized node that I have control over at the moment…

I haven't used IPFS so I was trying to see what the IPFS image URL would look like but when I tried to inspect the images using (right click -> inspect element), Chrome selects the whole division tab (class=MuiCardContent-root) in the Elements tab in web console. I found that it's happening because of (style="pointer-events: none;"). When this style attribute is removed from web console, I'm able to inspect individua…

Check an URL with results: https://pollinations.ai/p/QmbhMnkgrqqwQ39BP7S3F8qNSqHueaQz42...

The landing page is a bit of a mess

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

#260

Post by zerocrates »

a1369209993 wrote: post #234
acdha wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

… if someone else paid to host a copy. Major companies hosting it makes that less likely and if their backing increases usage that also increases the cost of hosting everything, making it more likely that the content you want will be available. When Google shuts down their mirror, suddenly all of that traffic is hitting nodes with far fewer resources. The underlying problem is that storage and bandwidth cost money an…

> suddenly all of that traffic is hitting nodes with far fewer resources. One of the points of IPFS (and bittorrent before it) is that this is not a problem; each node that downloads the data also uploads it to other nodes, so having lots of traffic actually makes it easier to serve something (indeed, if it was already widely seeded by Google's mirror, there wouldn't be any sudden traffic).

I'm not particularly familiar with IPFS: does it have some solution for free-riding?

BitTorrent as many have noted is great for popular things, even not-particularly-popular things, but absent incentives to continue seeding (i.e. private trackers' ratio requirements) even once-popular things easily become inaccessible as the majority of peers don't seed for long, or at all.

I guess what I don't quite is what IPFS adds vs. say, a trackerless BitTorrent magnet link that uses DHT? Or is it really just a slight iteration/improvement on that system?

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