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IPFS is the Distributed Web

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Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#51

Post by tom_mellior »

runeks wrote: post #30
lukaslalinsky wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I get it right, the idea is that if you want to make sure it's there one year later, you set up your own server and host the files on your own. IPFS just allows others to distribute a mirror of the files.

Why would nodes in the IPFS network voluntarily act as a load balancer for my VPS? Usually I have to pay for load balancing, so I'm a bit suspicious when someone claims I can get it for free from IPFS.

> Why would nodes in the IPFS network voluntarily act as a load balancer for my VPS?

Why would nodes in the BitTorrent network voluntarily act as a load balancer for your movies?

Same reason. Maybe you and I cannot explain the reason, but that does not mean that it doesn't happen. People don't always act in a 100% rational, for-profit manner, no matter what economics textbooks tell you.

(Edit: Of course the likelihood of your content being mirrored rises with the quality of your content.)

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#52

Post by bitJericho »

runeks wrote: post #32
lukaslalinsky wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot of (mostly free) content that people are willing to distribute freely. Take Wikipedia for example, even though it's changing very fast, I imagine a huge portion of it is static. If the latest version of each page was served via IPFS, somebody could setup a local mirror and people nearby would automatically use that.

I don't disagree with the fact that IPFS has value. I just don't like the way it's presented as a generic transport protocol that's "superior" to HTTP.

Just take a look at old torrents of obscure stuff and you'll see just how resilient bit torrent is. (it isn't)

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#53

Post by ZenoArrow »

hkt wrote: post #42
idlewords wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's the million-dollar question. I've been bashing my head against it for a few years now. I think an important thing is to give everyone a say in how these large computer networks affect their lives. How to do that in the context of a broken political system isn't clear to me at all.

The solution does not have to be technical. If you want to restore control to as wide a group as possible, start by running a centralised service with a membership structure. Not everybody is clever enough to run their own stuff, but almost everyone can use a website or an app. Allowing them a role in governance rather than operations is the key factor. I wish more people thought so.

> "Not everybody is clever enough to run their own stuff"

It's possible to make home servers easy enough to use they're effectively plug and play. I've got my own ideas of how this can be done, others have different ideas, but the goal of easy home server infrastructure is the same. Once you have that, it becomes painless to take part in IPFS or similar.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#54

Post by mcbits »

Suppose I'm poking around IPFS and unintentionally download some unauthorized copyrighted content. Is my computer going to automatically start sharing this content, exposing me and my ISP to legal action?

Or if there is a way to prevent sharing particular content that I've accessed, what's to stop me from leeching everything and never sharing anything?

(Edit: Ah, now I see "BitSwap" as possibly addressing my second question, but I'm still concerned about the first.)

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#55

Post by amelius »

idlewords wrote: post #9

I worry that this is another example of throwing technology at a social and political problem. That the current web is centralized has little to do with its technical design, and everything to do with economic and structural incentives that have made it that way. It's tempting to say "start afresh", but we'll just be trading our current problems for a new set of problems IPFS introduces. It's a law of nature that pro…

> I worry that this is another example of throwing technology at a social and political problem. [...] I would rather we do the hard work of fixing the web we've got

There are multiple flaws in your reasoning: for one, the web was also a technical solution to a social problem; also, IPFS is someone's hard work aimed at fixing the web we've got.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#56

Post by Kubuxu »

tscs37 wrote: post #16
msane wrote: post #7

If you want to tamper with content on the web, the idea that content is fingerprinted in IPFS is a huge deal. IPNS (the name service) then becomes the vulnerability, but that is also distributed.

Well, as I understood IPNS is a bit limited; it only has one resource and there is only one authority that can change content, the node in this case. It does protect against DDOS, since old content remains visible and online but if the private key is leaked or the node is malicious, it has exactly 0 protection. Even worse, if the private key is stolen, you can't do much about it unless you have DNS setup... which bri…

IPNS is bug Proof of Concept that mutable content is possible in IPFS, there is long running goal of InterPlanetary Record System that would include much more complex validity schemes including revokeation.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#57

Post by pdkl95 »

girzel wrote: post #3

Hey I have a related question: so with IPFS we all host bits of the internet, and with IPv6 our machines are all directly world-accessible, right? So how do we prevent this from turning into a huge pwn-fest? If routers aren't doing NAT and a bit of firewalling along with that, would each machine be completely responsible for its own security?

> with IPv6 our machines are all directly world-accessible

world-addressable != world-accessible

IPv6 just gives each device a unique address, which is orthogonal to deciding which packets you allow into your local network. In most situations, a stateful firewall (probably on a home router) will still block inbound packets by default, even if they are addressed properly to a valid local IPv6 address.

> would each machine be completely responsible for its own security?

Every single device is already and will continue to be responsible for its own security. A firewall doesn't remove the need for any security protections on each individual host. Border security adds defense in depth, which is great, but you have to assume an attack can bypass the firewall or originate from another host on the local network.

Assuming the firewall will offer sufficient protection and skipping the hard work of properly securing a device is how we get easily compromised trash like the cameras that recently DDoSed Dyn/etc.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#58

Post by idlewords »

amelius wrote: post #55
idlewords wrote: post #9

I worry that this is another example of throwing technology at a social and political problem. That the current web is centralized has little to do with its technical design, and everything to do with economic and structural incentives that have made it that way. It's tempting to say "start afresh", but we'll just be trading our current problems for a new set of problems IPFS introduces. It's a law of nature that pro…

> I worry that this is another example of throwing technology at a social and political problem. [...] I would rather we do the hard work of fixing the web we've got There are multiple flaws in your reasoning: for one, the web was also a technical solution to a social problem; also, IPFS is someone's hard work aimed at fixing the web we've got.

The web was a technical solution to an information management problem at a physics lab.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#59

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

bitJericho wrote: post #52
runeks wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with the fact that IPFS has value. I just don't like the way it's presented as a generic transport protocol that's "superior" to HTTP.

Just take a look at old torrents of obscure stuff and you'll see just how resilient bit torrent is. (it isn't)

It's more resilliant than HTTP: When you grab a torrent, you can download from any seeder. With HTTP, the host is specified, so if that host goes down, good luck.

In either case, if all the hosts go down and you didn't mirror it, you're screwed. However, IPFS makes it easier to mirror things.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#60

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

mcbits wrote: post #54

Suppose I'm poking around IPFS and unintentionally download some unauthorized copyrighted content. Is my computer going to automatically start sharing this content, exposing me and my ISP to legal action? Or if there is a way to prevent sharing particular content that I've accessed, what's to stop me from leeching everything and never sharing anything? (Edit: Ah, now I see "BitSwap" as possibly addressing my second q…

For #1, yes. For #2, also yes, and there's nothing to stop you from leeching save the goodness of your heart and your own personal laziness.
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