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Engineering for Slow Internet

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Re: Engineering for Slow Internet

#331

Post by Aachen »

miyuru wrote: post #281
palata wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you use WhatsApp over BitTorrent? And how do you update your macOS over BitTorrent? The author clearly says that downloaders elaborate enough to deal with slow connections (e.g. "download in a browser") were fine. The problem is that modern apps don't let you download the file the way you want, they just expect you to have a fast internet connection.

No, I just meant if he tried to get a large file(Linux ISO) with BitTorrent. which should be reliable in theory. Bittorent has webseeds support, which can use apples direct CDN urls to create a torrent file to download. archive.org still uses this technique and AWS S3 used to do this when they had torrent support. There a website that do just that, it creates a torrent file from any direct weburl. https://www.urlhash…

I didn't know that was possible! Thanks so much, I've got a torrent client but with so few things using bittorrent these days, it feels like innovation went backwards and it's now one-shot http downloads or bust. This will be helpful :)

Re: Engineering for Slow Internet

#332

Post by Aachen »

amelius wrote: post #200
meindnoch wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Create multiple virtual interfaces, apply different traffic shaping to them, and then use the --interface option of cURL.

Thanks, but I don't have root access to my machine.

That's not your machine

But to add something useful as well, you could just ctrl+z the ones you want to pause to let the priority one finish?

Re: Engineering for Slow Internet

#333

Post by Aachen »

nashashmi wrote: post #186

It takes a “special” skill Level to develop web applications in JS for low bandwidth connections. it takes time because frameworks and libraries are not built for this. there are very few libraries and frameworks in JS that are optimized for Low bandwidth connections. this requires having to program applications from scratch. I went through such a process. Took me two weeks versus two hours using JS query

What's odd is that I have the exact opposite: I find it uncomfortable to use megabytes of libraries with hundreds of dependencies when I can spend 30 seconds and discover the html5 native way of doing something. But my applications look butt ugly. They're fast and privacy preserving, but also it requires a special skill, from my point of view, to make them look good (be it design skills or knowing how to use these frameworks)

Re: Engineering for Slow Internet

#334

Post by palata »

miyuru wrote: post #281
palata wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you use WhatsApp over BitTorrent? And how do you update your macOS over BitTorrent? The author clearly says that downloaders elaborate enough to deal with slow connections (e.g. "download in a browser") were fine. The problem is that modern apps don't let you download the file the way you want, they just expect you to have a fast internet connection.

No, I just meant if he tried to get a large file(Linux ISO) with BitTorrent. which should be reliable in theory. Bittorent has webseeds support, which can use apples direct CDN urls to create a torrent file to download. archive.org still uses this technique and AWS S3 used to do this when they had torrent support. There a website that do just that, it creates a torrent file from any direct weburl. https://www.urlhash…

I can't believe I had never heard about webseeds [1] before!

Do I understand correctly that one can make a torrent from any HTTP-available file (without even owning the file) and start downloading and sharing with BitTorrent? It's incredible!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent#Web_seeding

Re: Engineering for Slow Internet

#335

Post by filleduchaos »

Aachen wrote: post #333
nashashmi wrote: post #186

It takes a “special” skill Level to develop web applications in JS for low bandwidth connections. it takes time because frameworks and libraries are not built for this. there are very few libraries and frameworks in JS that are optimized for Low bandwidth connections. this requires having to program applications from scratch. I went through such a process. Took me two weeks versus two hours using JS query

What's odd is that I have the exact opposite: I find it uncomfortable to use megabytes of libraries with hundreds of dependencies when I can spend 30 seconds and discover the html5 native way of doing something. But my applications look butt ugly. They're fast and privacy preserving, but also it requires a special skill, from my point of view, to make them look good (be it design skills or knowing how to use these fr…

The "html5 native way of doing things" is not necessarily inherently fast (or reliable) without scripting tbh.

Re: Engineering for Slow Internet

#336

Post by semi »

mike_hearn wrote: post #162
bayindirh wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, getting 6.4KB of data (just tested on my blog) or 60KB of data (a git.sr.ht repository with a README.md and a PNG) is way better than getting 20MB of frameworks in the first place.

Yeah, but your blog is not a full featured chat system with integrated audio and video calling, strapped on top of a document format. There are a few architectural/policy problems in web browsers that cause this kind of expansion: 1. Browsers can update large binaries asynchronously (=instant from the user's perspective) but this feature is only very recently available to web apps via obscure caching headers and most…

The privacy issues aren't just hypothetical, but that aside, that caching model unfortunately doesn't mesh well with modern webdev. It requires all dependencies to be shipped in full, no tree shaking to only include the needed functions. And separately as individual files.. and for people to actually stick to the same versions of dependencies

Re: Engineering for Slow Internet

#337

Post by LtWorf »

RGamma wrote: post #253
LtWorf wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely you're aware of gzip encoding on the wire for http right?

Sure, would be interesting to know how it would fare against purpose-made compression under real world conditions still...

gzip is fast. And it was made for real world conditions.

Re: Engineering for Slow Internet

#338

Post by Scoundreller »

greenish_shores wrote: post #299
Scoundreller wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even wealthy countries will have dead zones (Toronto subway until recently, and like 90% of the landmass), and at least in Canada, “running out of data” and just having none left (or it being extremely expensive) was relatively common until about the last year or two when things got competitive (finally!). Still have an entire territory where everything is satellite fed (Nunavut), including its capital.

Wow. I didn't knew that Nunavut is entirely satellite fed. That's very interesting to know, thanks. Do you have some more info, though? What kind of satellite - geostationary, LEO? Also which constellation has the most share of traffic from Nunavut?

Unsure if other telcos have their own setups, but:

> Northwestel, one of biggest internet service providers in the North, said it provides broadband service for all Nunavut communities using Telesat's Telestar 19 VANTAGE high-throughput satellite. After the satellite was deployed in July 2018, Northwestel said it would significantly improve broadband connectivity in the territory, increasing speeds to 15 megabits per second.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/efforts-underway-to-improve-...

Interestingly, the same satellite (but different transponders) probably supplies internet to a good chunk of transatlantic voyages between US/Can and Europe: https://www.telesat.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Telstar-1...

Re: Engineering for Slow Internet

#339

Post by hinkley »

lukan wrote: post #137
padolsey wrote: post #43

A lot of this resonates. I'm not in Antartica, I'm in Beijing, but still struggle with the internet. Being behind the great firewall means using creative approaches. VPNs only sometimes work, and each leaves a signature that the firewall's hueristics and ML can eventually catch onto. Even state-mandated ones are 'gently' limited at times of political sensitivity. It all ends up meaning that, even if I get a connectio…

"I feel like some devs need to time-travel back to 2005 or something and develop for that era in order to learn how to build things nimbly." No need to invent time travel, just let them have a working retreat somewhere with only bad mobile connection for a few days.

A little time with embedded hardware will teach you a few things too.

Re: Engineering for Slow Internet

#340

Post by KETHERCORTEX »

lukan wrote: post #137
padolsey wrote: post #43

A lot of this resonates. I'm not in Antartica, I'm in Beijing, but still struggle with the internet. Being behind the great firewall means using creative approaches. VPNs only sometimes work, and each leaves a signature that the firewall's hueristics and ML can eventually catch onto. Even state-mandated ones are 'gently' limited at times of political sensitivity. It all ends up meaning that, even if I get a connectio…

"I feel like some devs need to time-travel back to 2005 or something and develop for that era in order to learn how to build things nimbly." No need to invent time travel, just let them have a working retreat somewhere with only bad mobile connection for a few days.

There's no need for retreat. Chrome DevTools have "simulate slow connection" button.
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