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Wasmer Edge: WebAssembly on the Edge

wasmer.io

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Re: Wasmer Edge: WebAssembly on the Edge

#31

Post by ofrzeta »

I don't get what "the edge" is here. I understand what the edge is with Cloudflare and how it makes sense to run certain applications there but Wasmer doesn't have this kind of infrastructure, does it? Is there any difference to a very small CDN (or APN - application delivery network)?

Now when I read about the architecture and the locations it just seems like ordinary cloud hosting, albeit serverless, to me. I can't make much sense of phrases like "The core design of what makes up the Wasmer Edge code base is a distributed monolith" either.

So thanks in advance for any help :)

Re: Wasmer Edge: WebAssembly on the Edge

#33

Post by tough »

joshmarinacci wrote: post #29

I like this way of making software, but calling 'Edge' and saying decentralized is confusing. This is a service that hosts my software on their computers. How is this different than AWS or CloudFlare or any of the other cloud providers? I understand their VM tech is different, but what does makes it 'Edge' or 'decentralized'?

It usually involves multiple hosts in different geo-location areas so you run the server code also closer to the user, vercel does this too

Re: Wasmer Edge: WebAssembly on the Edge

#34

Post by eins1234 »

syrusakbary wrote: post #4
jadbox wrote: post #2

I wasn't quite sure what kinds of deployment are supported. I clicked on the next.js link but it just redirected to the same page.

With the rush we forgot to update some of the cases in the product page, thanks for the feedback! We'll update them shortly. Right now we are starting with Rust (with full networking with tokio) and static sites. Node.js (allowing Next.js to be fully runnable) and Python (allowing Django and Flask) support will be coming soon!

Also curious about how Node.js support would work?

I've heard about efforts to compile SpiderMonkey to WASM to run JS, but never V8 and the entirety of Node.js. That would be super exciting if that's what you're looking to accomplish. Would love to follow along and contribute if this is part of an open source effort!

Curious if you think cold starts could be a problem with this approach? Share-nothing architecture sounds great until you realize you have to load the entirety of V8 and Node.js on every request, but maybe you've figured out some way to work around that?

Also, how do you think the lack of JIT could affect real-world JS runtime performance? Or is there a solution for that too?

Re: Wasmer Edge: WebAssembly on the Edge

#36

Post by ignoramous »

ofrzeta wrote: post #31

I don't get what "the edge" is here. I understand what the edge is with Cloudflare and how it makes sense to run certain applications there but Wasmer doesn't have this kind of infrastructure, does it? Is there any difference to a very small CDN (or APN - application delivery network)? Now when I read about the architecture and the locations it just seems like ordinary cloud hosting, albeit serverless, to me. I can't…

I asked bard and this is what it conjured up:

> You're a master at communicating technical concepts to developers by being concise, removing fluff, and speaking plainly without any marketing speak. Please explain what the following means...

  Sure. Here is my explanation of the quote you provided:
  
  1. Distributed monolith: A distributed monolith is a software architecture that combines the benefits of both monolithic and microservices architectures. Like a monolith, all of the code for a distributed monolith is contained in a single binary. However, like a microservices architecture, the code is divided into independent libraries that can be deployed and scaled independently.
  2. Separation of concerns: Separation of concerns is a software design principle that breaks down a software system into smaller parts, each of which is responsible for a single, well-defined task. This makes the system easier to understand, maintain, and evolve.
  3. Rust libraries: Rust is a programming language that is designed for speed, safety, and reliability. Rust libraries are compiled into machine code at compile time, which makes them faster and more efficient than interpreted languages like Python or JavaScript.
  4. Scalability: Scalability is the ability of a software system to handle increased demand without sacrificing performance. Distributed monoliths can be scaled out by adding more nodes to the system. This makes them a good choice for applications that need to be able to handle a large number of users or requests.
Sounds convincing.

Re: Wasmer Edge: WebAssembly on the Edge

#37

Post by syrusakbary »

moralestapia wrote: post #28
syrusakbary wrote: post #5

Hi HN! I'm Syrus, from Wasmer. We have created Wasmer Edge as a powerful alternative to the Clouds. An alternative that allows reusing the codebases that worked in the Cloud without rewriting them to custom SDKs (such as Amazon Lambda, or Cloudflare Workers), and running them at CDN-like prices. With Wasmer Edge you can use a normal http-server in any language or even write a full DNS server based on it. We are incre…

Hi Syrus, this looks great and I'm an early adopter of WASM and Wasmer so anything new on this end is interesting to me. That said, >Join the waitlist to try Wasmer Edge today and experience the difference for yourself. ... this was very anticlimactic, it made me look away, honestly. Could you just let us all in?

I feel your pain. We need to scale it slowly to provide the best experience for the people and companies using it (including tight and free support!) but hopefully we will be able to open the service to everyone soon.

I guess we really internalized YC's motto: we rather have one person having a great experience and loving us, than 10 liking us with an ok experience than 100 using us with a poor experience ...and the waitlist helps on that quest.

Although it seems there's a good chance you'll love the product. Feel free to message me to syrus@wasmer.io and we'll be in touch soon!

Re: Wasmer Edge: WebAssembly on the Edge

#38

Post by CharlesW »

ofrzeta wrote: post #31

I don't get what "the edge" is here. I understand what the edge is with Cloudflare and how it makes sense to run certain applications there but Wasmer doesn't have this kind of infrastructure, does it? Is there any difference to a very small CDN (or APN - application delivery network)? Now when I read about the architecture and the locations it just seems like ordinary cloud hosting, albeit serverless, to me. I can't…

> I don't get what "the edge" is here. I understand what the edge is with Cloudflare and how it makes sense to run certain applications there but Wasmer doesn't have this kind of infrastructure, does it?

It does, and the product page (https://wasmer.io/products/edge) makes it a lot clearer than the linked announcement that Wasmer Edge is basically "Cloudflare Workers for Wasm".

The chart at the bottom of the page¹ shows what Wasmer thinks Wasmer Edge completes with — Cloudflare Workers, Amazon Lambda, Fly.io, and "Cloud" (whatever that is). The most significant differentiator seems to be that Wasmer Edge runs on browsers and phones in addition to servers in the cloud, which makes it "edgier" than the alternatives.

¹ Note that it calls the service "Wasmer Deploy" instead of "Wasner Edge", which I assume is a mistake.

Re: Wasmer Edge: WebAssembly on the Edge

#40

Post by [deleted] »

syrusakbary wrote: post #5

Hi HN! I'm Syrus, from Wasmer. We have created Wasmer Edge as a powerful alternative to the Clouds. An alternative that allows reusing the codebases that worked in the Cloud without rewriting them to custom SDKs (such as Amazon Lambda, or Cloudflare Workers), and running them at CDN-like prices. With Wasmer Edge you can use a normal http-server in any language or even write a full DNS server based on it. We are incre…

[deleted]
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