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Tim Berners-Lee: We need to re-decentralise the web

wired.co.uk

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Re: Tim Berners-Lee: We need to re-decentralise the web

#91

Post by aij »

dbingham wrote: post #55

Decrentralizing the web's software isn't good enough. We need to decentralize the hardware. Right now, connections to the web look like a tree, where a whole bunch of connections get funneled through an ISP. That ISP has the power. The power to throttle, the power to block, the power to record. And that ISP can be pressured by other powers. We need to decentralize so that instead of looking like a hierarchical tree,…

Where I live at least, nearly everyone has a wireless router, which hardware-wise should have no trouble talking to other wireless routers in nearby buildings. Often, there are even multiple wireless routers in the same building, which can't talk to each other except through the ISPs, which I find quite ridiculous.

So, in urban areas of the US at least, it really is just a matter of software.

Of course, a large scale wireless mesh network would probably be somewhat lacking in terms of performance, but we also still have wired connections to ISPs and could start setting up wired connections to each other. Peering with your neighbor (wirelessly or not) to share idle bandwidth shouldn't make things any slower than they already are...

The problem of course is that everyone would have to use a compatible mesh protocol. There are several options for a mesh network protocol now, but I don't know of any that scales well while remaining decentralized. Even if someone did come up with a good protocol now, considering how long the switch to IPv6 has been taking, I wouldn't expect any switch away from IPv4 to happen very soon.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee: We need to re-decentralise the web

#92

Post by icebraining »

nawitus wrote: post #47
icebraining wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say HTTP doesn't support it? If a browser doubled as a server, and each person hosted its own pages, how would that not be decentralized and P2P? Hell, it's been done: Opera Unite had just that model, with web pages and applications hosted by the browser itself: http://www.operasoftware.com/press/releases/general/opera-un...

Okay, technically HTTP does support it, but it's not standardized.

How so? What's the non-standard part?

Re: Tim Berners-Lee: We need to re-decentralise the web

#93

Post by icebraining »

dllthomas wrote: post #38
icebraining wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say HTTP doesn't support it? If a browser doubled as a server, and each person hosted its own pages, how would that not be decentralized and P2P? Hell, it's been done: Opera Unite had just that model, with web pages and applications hosted by the browser itself: http://www.operasoftware.com/press/releases/general/opera-un...

The big problem with browser-as-server is that users typically want to power off their browsing devices, while they typically want servers to be always-on. Tying it through a cloud-hosted VPS or some local dedicated device (those wall-wart computers, or something else lightweight and low power but sufficiently capable), but then having the browser talk to it smartly (potentially from several devices simultaneously),…

People interested in privacy and Free Software are already working on it: https://freedomboxfoundation.org/learn/

Re: Tim Berners-Lee: We need to re-decentralise the web

#94

Post by doctoboggan »

p4bl0 wrote: post #79
doctoboggan wrote: post #78

Perfect timing, I just released a tool that enabled a more decentralized web. It used BitTorrent Sync to distribute files and I plan on implementing namecoin or colored coins for name resolution. As soon as an open source, stable btsync clone is released I plan on swapping it in. The biggest drawback is that you can only serve static content, although I think many websites today would be fine with this restriction. Y…

This is quite nice. You should submit it as a "Show HN". You can be sure that as soon as you have a free software replacement for btsync I'll use it at least to serve my personal website. By the way, have you heard about Freenet? https://freenetproject.org/

Yeah I did submit it but it didn't get much attention. I don't know the etiquette on resubmitting items.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee: We need to re-decentralise the web

#95

Post by acd »

I think a powerful thing would be a p2p anonymous net interface that ships default with the Linux kernel.

So not only would you have eth0: You would have p2p0: Anonymous, Unique ID, DHT

So you could reach your web server eiher via 192.168.0.100 or short unique id

SSL communications will not be based on central CAs because that model is long compromised.

I think we should built this together. Maybe its GNUnet?

Re: Tim Berners-Lee: We need to re-decentralise the web

#96

Post by Carltonian »

thisiswrong wrote: post #64
dbingham wrote: post #55

Decrentralizing the web's software isn't good enough. We need to decentralize the hardware. Right now, connections to the web look like a tree, where a whole bunch of connections get funneled through an ISP. That ISP has the power. The power to throttle, the power to block, the power to record. And that ISP can be pressured by other powers. We need to decentralize so that instead of looking like a hierarchical tree,…

>Right now, connections to the web look like a tree, where a whole bunch of connections get funneled through an ISP This is very true. More so if you look at countries like the UK where ISPs have recently been consolidated into MAFIAA-complying monopolies that censor just about anything that Hollywood and the government ask them to. It's scary how close ISPs are to the 'governements' of the UK and USA. Obamas' recent…

I'd think content providers in general would be willing to provide bandwidth under a mesh network. They'd also be the ones most likely to pipe the mesh into the existing infrastructure. Who else besides the likes of Google / Netflix / Facebook would front heavier duty APs city-wide. Every ounce of traffic would have to be encrypted though. The main barriers for mesh networking when I look at it are:

First and foremost: Antennas and hardware in general. It's one thing to maintain a multi-channel 500mbps connection within 10-20 feet, let alone doing it with multiple devices simultaneously connected to other multiple devices. Even if you scale the speed down, the consumer grade hardware out there isn't targeting this use case.

Second: Protocols. If we had the hardware, the whole mesh has to be trustless while being affected as little as possible by connectivity and pathing overhead. Plus backwards compatible with existing infrastructure (which is less hard I guess).

Third: Gatekeepers. If you get them on board, creating the mesh as a natural extension of the internet becomes easy. Since they invariably won't be on board, it'll be that much harder.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee: We need to re-decentralise the web

#97

Post by auvrw »

aij wrote: post #91
dbingham wrote: post #55

Decrentralizing the web's software isn't good enough. We need to decentralize the hardware. Right now, connections to the web look like a tree, where a whole bunch of connections get funneled through an ISP. That ISP has the power. The power to throttle, the power to block, the power to record. And that ISP can be pressured by other powers. We need to decentralize so that instead of looking like a hierarchical tree,…

Where I live at least, nearly everyone has a wireless router, which hardware-wise should have no trouble talking to other wireless routers in nearby buildings. Often, there are even multiple wireless routers in the same building, which can't talk to each other except through the ISPs, which I find quite ridiculous. So, in urban areas of the US at least, it really is just a matter of software. Of course, a large scale…

> So, in urban areas of the US at least, it really is just a matter of software.

and, if you're really zealous about it, the firmware. there was a high-priority FSF project a while back for free wireless router firmware. that listing mentioned something called "orangemesh," which now appears to be on hold. what are some of the other options out there on the software side?

Re: Tim Berners-Lee: We need to re-decentralise the web

#98

Post by peterwwillis »

This actually has nothing to do with the web in general, or the internet, or politics, or personal liberties, or peer to peer networks. This is about designing stable distributed applications.

Almost every really big, really stable website (or network service) is built on a set of distributed applications. Global data redundancy is just one of the considerations. If you want your application available everywhere, all the time, you have to design it to withstand faults, to distribute data and computation, and to do this over long distances, and still perform the same actions the same way everywhere. That's all a de-centralized web needs to look like, and it's actually already implemented in many places.

What I think Tim is saying is that we need to move away from concepts that centralize data and computation and use existing proven models to make them more stable in a global way. And i'm totally behind that. But if you think we're going to get there with p2p, self-hosted solutions, new protocols, new tools, new paradigms, or a new internet, you've completely missed the boat. We have had everything we need to accomplish what Tim wants for a while. It just has to be used properly [which some companies actually do].

But good luck convincing most companies to spend the time and money doing that...

Re: Tim Berners-Lee: We need to re-decentralise the web

#99

Post by Carltonian »

williamcotton wrote: post #88
swalsh wrote: post #68

I've been trying to think about "rethinking" government for quite a while. The idea of a web based governance system seems really appealing, in the sense that I think the greatest strength of the web is how quickly ideas can go from concept to execution. Its about the closest thing to a meritocracy as we've ever come, and that's simply because the gate keeper is thrown away. Think about how many great things have spr…

You, like a whole bunch of the new technocratic futurists, have almost no ability to discern fantasy from reality. What you're talking about is popularly known as science fiction. You should be writing books and not pretending like you know the first thing about politics. The reason why things take so long in reality is because there is a multitude of voices. Reddit does not promote pluralism, rather a giant circle-j…

It's not compromise. Compromise implies you give a fuck about the wills and whims of the other party or parties out of concern or compassion or belief in some objective fairness. That's not how shit works. You aim to get what you can anyway you can or you lose to someone else who does. That's politics.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee: We need to re-decentralise the web

#100

Post by desireco42 »

fafner wrote: post #53
desireco42 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's crucify his for that :) I hear what you are saying, but there is also reason for drm. Or we will have flash forever. What I am saying, I at least can understand why he did it.

Flash and Silverlight are dying anyway. So it's up to the movie industry and not up to us to bend over. And you know at least Flash was separated from the browser and ported to several systems. DRM in HTML5 will mean that Google, Apple, Microsoft will simply bundle their DRM modules and the free software world can fuck off. DRM in HTML5 is far worse than the status quo.

I don't share completely your assertions. In order for commercial companies to be able to use html5, they need some form of drm. This is just enabling them to do business.

I believe that free and open, given some semblance of equal playing field will always win.

Just to be clear, if they came and say, no drm in html, I would stand behind that as well. I just accept their judgement that this was necessary at the moment for things to work.

I don't think only my view is right, so, I might be wrong here, but this is what I believe.

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