P2P still works great. Unfortunately the well has been poisoned for alot of people, as it's widely assumed that "torrenting" of any sort must be illegal, even if it's for perfectly legitimate purposes.
Nothing illegal about Linux ISOs
The Legacy of Peer-to-Peer Systems
11–20 of 49 posts
Re: The Legacy of Peer-to-Peer Systems
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
Years ago, most computing devices were desktops. They often had a routable IP address, unlimited power, and would happily sit passing packets all day. This made things like a DHT practical, so you could find your other peers. This made things like the early days of skype where except for auth, chat and file sharing was p2p. After being online for long enough and having a routable IP, you could become a supernode to h…
I agree that a pool of equal peers is tough these days. I think the Fediverse has a pretty good approach, where most end users are on mobile but you can spin up a server whenever. There’s still a big complexity/skill/cost jump from “I toot from my iPhone” to “I run a mastodon instance for my company” though. Some of that can be addressed by managed hosting. It’s probably preferable to have a “super peer” though. In m…
Agreed. Supernodes should be near zero admin, and be able to run where advantageous, not just where an expert is available. OwnCloud/Nextcloud running every more services and at least looking at fediverse integration. Various NASs allow local applications for photos, plex, etc. All targeted at being nearly turnkey and friendly to the average consumer.
Ideally things become easy enough that people can depend less on FAANG and do more with services that are distributed. Hopefully the software can get to the point where your server helps when it can, but if it's down other servers would help out. I just bought a $120 ($140 with case) router, 8 cores, 8GB ram, 32GB storage, GigE + 2x2.5gbe. I've love to dedicate it for messaging, filesharing, mastodon, photo storage/viewing/sharing, etc and even have it exchange services with others so that message/photos/whatever can be shared even if it goes down. Hopefully it gets there, pretty amazing resources are available cheap these days. I'd happily trade 2/3rd of my resources for other peers ... if they did the same for me.
Re: The Legacy of Peer-to-Peer Systems
#13What happened to peer-to-peer as a technological concept? Actually, we still use a lot of that technology.
Smartphones took over as people's primary "computers" of choice. And mobile devices, generally, don't even get an IPv4 address with ports as most are behind carrier NAT. So most people cannot participate on the internet anymore and require third parties to hold their metaphorical hand when doing network operations. For people still using actual computers with real internet connections and ports p2p is still as big, a…
Here's an off-topic but somewhat related question that I've been meaning to ask somewhere.
How do "plug and play" consumer devices that receive an incoming call / connection work behind the typical home NAT router? I have an OOMA VOIP phone service which is plugged into my home router with no ports forwarded. It has no trouble receiving an incoming call.
Does it simply open an outgoing connection and hold it open indefinitely?
Re: The Legacy of Peer-to-Peer Systems
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Smartphones took over as people's primary "computers" of choice. And mobile devices, generally, don't even get an IPv4 address with ports as most are behind carrier NAT. So most people cannot participate on the internet anymore and require third parties to hold their metaphorical hand when doing network operations. For people still using actual computers with real internet connections and ports p2p is still as big, a…
Here's an off-topic but somewhat related question that I've been meaning to ask somewhere. How do "plug and play" consumer devices that receive an incoming call / connection work behind the typical home NAT router? I have an OOMA VOIP phone service which is plugged into my home router with no ports forwarded. It has no trouble receiving an incoming call. Does it simply open an outgoing connection and hold it open ind…
STUN or an intermediary
Re: The Legacy of Peer-to-Peer Systems
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Smartphones took over as people's primary "computers" of choice. And mobile devices, generally, don't even get an IPv4 address with ports as most are behind carrier NAT. So most people cannot participate on the internet anymore and require third parties to hold their metaphorical hand when doing network operations. For people still using actual computers with real internet connections and ports p2p is still as big, a…
Here's an off-topic but somewhat related question that I've been meaning to ask somewhere. How do "plug and play" consumer devices that receive an incoming call / connection work behind the typical home NAT router? I have an OOMA VOIP phone service which is plugged into my home router with no ports forwarded. It has no trouble receiving an incoming call. Does it simply open an outgoing connection and hold it open ind…
Yes, that's pretty much the only way it could work.
Re: The Legacy of Peer-to-Peer Systems
#16[deleted]
Re: The Legacy of Peer-to-Peer Systems
#17I think part of what has happened to decentralized internet systems is technological, and part of it is terminology.
It seems like we still have decentralized systems but now call them fediverse, distributed, decentralized, federated, ipfs, web 3.0, etc..
It might have been interesting if he'd looked at searches for those terms as well.
Re: The Legacy of Peer-to-Peer Systems
#18What happened to peer-to-peer as a technological concept? Actually, we still use a lot of that technology.
NAT happened. Everyone is behind a NAT these days. No way to directly network with any computer on the internet anymore.
Re: The Legacy of Peer-to-Peer Systems
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Smartphones took over as people's primary "computers" of choice. And mobile devices, generally, don't even get an IPv4 address with ports as most are behind carrier NAT. So most people cannot participate on the internet anymore and require third parties to hold their metaphorical hand when doing network operations. For people still using actual computers with real internet connections and ports p2p is still as big, a…
Being behind a NAT poses constraints for p2p technologies (you need some well-known servers to do the hole-punching and act as a relay, but that's not too different from the well-know IPs that are needed for bootstraping a regular p2p system anyway, except of course, not every NAT are friendly to hole punching, and that's a problem as well…) but that also has a significant security and privacy advantage: since you ar…
NAT punching definitely tells other peers your NAT's IP address (and often your local address too, but that's less important).
Unless you're behind CGNAT, your NAT IP can often be used to find your neighborhood with public information. With private information (a legal challenge for example) you can find the exact subscriber/house.
Re: The Legacy of Peer-to-Peer Systems
#20P2P still works great. Unfortunately the well has been poisoned for alot of people, as it's widely assumed that "torrenting" of any sort must be illegal, even if it's for perfectly legitimate purposes.
Just wanted to say this. Still using p2p in 2022. Yes, it’s less frequent than before due to ubiquitous content online but it’s still very reliable.