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HTTP is obsolete. It's time for the Distributed Web (2015)

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Re: HTTP is obsolete. It's time for the Distributed Web (2015)

#71

Post by Too »

yeukhon wrote: post #46

So a couple questions even reading this... 1. The availability depends on the number of peers like BitTorrent? If so, and if no seed is available, how does one access the content, esp in the context of an intranet? 2. Any change to how we run infrastructure except not serving HTTP?

It's not like you upload something to the swarm then disconnect your own server and hope people will forever seed. The swarm is a backup and load balancer. You (or some hosting provider you pay) should still be the main seeder of your own content.

Re: HTTP is obsolete. It's time for the Distributed Web (2015)

#73

Post by jancsika »

Asdfbla wrote: post #49

Why are distributed filesystems like IPFS so popular again these days ? Freenet has been around (and super niche) for close to 20 years soon. Is it because the Bitcoin hype has reinvigorated crypto-anarchists?

From the article:

> IPFS doesn’t require every node to store all of the content that has ever been published to IPFS. Instead, you choose what data you want to help persist.

Freenet has a different set of design goals and tradeoffs. IPFS is much close to Bittorrent which AFAICT has never really waned in popularity.

Re: HTTP is obsolete. It's time for the Distributed Web (2015)

#74

Post by blurbleblurble »

I need to comment because people are missing the point... there's nothing in this text that says the web won't need servers.

Imagine that you and some friends want to launch a small local business and need to host a website. Instead of paying to host it "up in the cloud", why not plug a few raspberry pi's into the walls at each of your houses? Between that and also seeding it from your laptops, the site should have decent coverage. Maybe you could also offer some discounts for loyal customers who choose to seed it. This site will be redundantly hosted in the location where it's most likely to be accessed.

If you're doing something more permanent, then you will want to make sure you have more stable hosts, and not just some peoples cell phones. Just like you do now. It's the same thing as now. If you want to host something, make sure there is at least one computer that is serving it on a decent internet connection.

The difference is that with distributed web technologies, there is a smooth continuum for scaling. You don't even need to assume there is an ISP to seed! All you need is LANs. But if you want to do big things, you can harness the power of thousands of peers all streaming something that they're into.

I use syncthing and resilio sync all the time, and it works great with just 3 devices.

Re: HTTP is obsolete. It's time for the Distributed Web (2015)

#76

Post by blurbleblurble »

Semiapies wrote: post #11

Ugh, servers! Except, you're gonna have to have servers unless you've got the entire web backed up on everyone's computer. Otherwise, you don't and can't know how many copies of a page or other file are out there. But who's going to pay for servers to retain random peoples' and companies' web detritus? This whole project exists because that's not feasible in the long term... It's not "crazy", it's pure, thoughtless h…

Nobody is saying we can't or shouldn't have servers.

"But who's going to pay for servers to retain random peoples' and companies' web detritus?"

The same people who do this now. Because nothing in this scheme says you can't have servers just like you do now.

The difference is that you don't need a server to get started collaborating. If you want to host something to have it available offline, that's a built in feature. If you and some friends want to host an event invite, grass roots, you can do that. No need for facebook, no need for big cloud platforms. Share around a web page. People will host it while it's needed.

Personally I'm more into dat than IPFS... but they each of their own use cases. I like stuff that's not going to be "permanent". There is plenty of room for stuff like that. Not everything has to be in some permanent public record for all time. We need more accessible ways to share stuff like that. We need good ways to share stuff privately. Skip this ridiculous idea that Mark Zuckerberg should be privy to everybody's private, personal information. No thanks. Share that stuff on LANs, on encrypted p2p connections. Keep it nearby.

If you want to publish, that's what IPFS is for. And if you want it to stick around, invest the resources to make sure there are servers, whether they be on digital ocean or a bunch of raspberry pi's plugged into you and your friends' walls, that are seeding it. That's on you as someone who's committed to publishing information.

Re: HTTP is obsolete. It's time for the Distributed Web (2015)

#77

Post by tmerr »

Asdfbla wrote: post #49

Why are distributed filesystems like IPFS so popular again these days ? Freenet has been around (and super niche) for close to 20 years soon. Is it because the Bitcoin hype has reinvigorated crypto-anarchists?

Hmm they are sort of different things. Freenet basically has hash-addressed content plus some relationship between human-readable strings and the hashes, so you/can/refer/to/stuff/like/this making it easy to use HTTP on top of Freenet for navigation. In contrast IPFS makes the hashed content itself in charge of navigation by using git-like objects -- if you understand the way git objects work https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Internals-Git-Objects then you understand that this allows you to navigate an immutable tree of content and an immutable history. In contrast, on Freenet particular files are immutable, but that's as much as they guarantee.

They also differ in the way routing works. On Freenet you ask a (mostly) random neighbor whether they have a file with the hash you want. If they don't have it, they ask another (mostly) random neighbor. This can go on for a while, until it either finds the content or hits a maximum number of hops, in which case it backtracks. The only point of these rube-goldberg shenanigans is anonymity. Since IPFS is more concerned about performance it flips this on its head: instead of blindly asking nodes for content, it carefully keeps track of peers who advertise what they're looking for; aside from being much more efficient, this also allows you to choose not to do business with leechers, like in bittorrent.

Maybe IPFS is a reinvention of a past technology, but certainly not Freenet. (Does anyone know of something closer?)

Freenet paper: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs414/2003sp/papers/freene...

IPFS paper: https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs/blob/master/papers/ipfs-cap2pfs...

Re: HTTP is obsolete. It's time for the Distributed Web (2015)

#78

Post by blurbleblurble »

Asdfbla wrote: post #47
alwillis wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because IPFS uses a distributed hash table like Bittorent, you don't have to know where stuff is--that's the problem with the HTTP, which is location addressed. IPFS is content addressed—the hash is the location. You never host anything unless you want to; you don't host random stuff. It's 2017, if you're using Google Docs or an instant messenger program and lose access to the backbone, you can't communicate with som…

Someone has to have replicated the file though, else it can be lost. Yeah, you still have the hash, but if no one is left that stored the file, what are you gonna do - brute-force search for a preimage of the hash to get your content? As long as IPFS requires replication to be voluntary on the side of the nodes, the argument of the parent holds.

That's the same thing we've got now, except that going through the process of "replicating the file" usually means either paying an a hosting company and learning how to maintain a server or signing your control and rights over to a company like Facebook.

There's nothing preventing anyone from going through these same measures with IPFS or dat. It's just that you don't have to in order to get started hosting something.

Re: HTTP is obsolete. It's time for the Distributed Web (2015)

#79

Post by blurbleblurble »

simplyluke wrote: post #23
setra wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can purchase a droplet on digital ocean than has gigabit and a terabyte of transfer every month for $5. A terabyte is more than enough content for me. I am sure most people could afford that to manage their interneting.

>I can purchase a droplet on digital ocean than has gigabit and a terabyte of transfer every month for $5 >I am sure most people could afford that to manage their interneting And before the spec has even seen real adoption, we've already seen it centralize into a few major providers. A bit tongue-in-cheek, but it's a real issue. HTTP isn't the reason things are centralizing so much as economies of scale and convenien…

Git itself doesn't inherently provide the services that github does: discovery, project management, and social tools.

The kinds of tools that would make distributing those aspects of github are precisely what this article is advocating for!

Re: HTTP is obsolete. It's time for the Distributed Web (2015)

#80

Post by alexasmyths »

caymanbruce wrote: post #55
alexasmyths wrote: post #15

Wonderful articulation. But I suggest that internet is 'centralized' not due to any technological function, but due to the nature of information, particularly the economics and business of information. The 'protocol' used to pass information from A-B, were it changed to something better, would not yield what the author is suggesting. Google 'would still have all our stuff' - I believe. When 'individuals' can 'run ser…

No. The Chinese government will fancy a 'centralized' internet that the government has total control. It will try as hard as it could to make sure the internet is 'centralized' and dismantle anything that is distributed or P2P. Some ISP in China doesn't even allow you to use a public IP. So I think this IPFS thing is most likely a huge threat to the GFW(Great Firewall) system of China. I hope this thing can eventuall…

I didn't mean to say that they would do something 'decentralized' - of course they wouldn't. But possibly something 'better' than HTTP.

One of the things about the net, is that it's transactionally open.

There's no inherent identity/or security, it was grafted on with SSL - 'kind of'.

I suggest it might have been better if identity were required to even make connections, to avoid many kinds of attacks. Hopefully, it could be done in an unbureaucratic manner, also wherein 'identities' can remain de-facto anonymous.

My main point was that 'http' is kind of old, but we're stuck with it unless a 'major power' does something about it.

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