This Could be Big: Decentralized Web Standard Under Development by W3C

#1

Post by kerben » Fri, May 06, 2011, 4:26 PM UTC

This Could be Big: Decentralized Web Standard Under Development by W3C
readwriteweb.com

Re: This Could be Big: Decentralized Web Standard Under Development by W3C

#2

Post by swombat » Fri, May 06, 2011, 5:03 PM UTC

As the comments point out, this is not a generic decentralised web standard to get around ICE and the like, but just a specification for p2p audio/video/etc communications for online video conferencing and so on. Not as big as I hoped.

Re: This Could be Big: Decentralized Web Standard Under Development by W3C

#3

Post by phlux » Fri, May 06, 2011, 5:09 PM UTC

I wonder how easily man-in-the-middle attacks via node spoofing would be.

You masquerade as a node by re-hosting their content and you capture any other client that accesses your proxy of that information.

Re: This Could be Big: Decentralized Web Standard Under Development by W3C

#4

Post by codemechanic » Fri, May 06, 2011, 5:11 PM UTC

Tonido (http://www.tonido.com) is a pioneer in this space. They have invented the model much before opera unit. The cool thing is that Tonido also provides a decentralized openid to end users.

Firefox should buy Tonido. It will change the industry if it happens and the way people share information. I probably may be little ahead. If you think deeply it will make sense.

Re: This Could be Big: Decentralized Web Standard Under Development by W3C

#5

Post by mcrider » Fri, May 06, 2011, 5:23 PM UTC

swombat wrote: post #2

As the comments point out, this is not a generic decentralised web standard to get around ICE and the like, but just a specification for p2p audio/video/etc communications for online video conferencing and so on. Not as big as I hoped.

That's a shame. I was just thinking yesterday how great it would be to be able to host web pages in a P2P fashion (after all, people are building an economy of the bittorrent infrastructure). Sites like WikiLeaks would get a great advantage of this sort of protocol.

Re: This Could be Big: Decentralized Web Standard Under Development by W3C

#6

Post by bxr » Fri, May 06, 2011, 5:31 PM UTC

mcrider wrote: post #5

swombat wrote: post #2

As the comments point out, this is not a generic decentralised web standard to get around ICE and the like, but just a specification for p2p audio/video/etc communications for online video conferencing and so on. Not as big as I hoped.

That's a shame. I was just thinking yesterday how great it would be to be able to host web pages in a P2P fashion (after all, people are building an economy of the bittorrent infrastructure). Sites like WikiLeaks would get a great advantage of this sort of protocol.

It sounds like you're looking for the Freenet project.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet

Re: This Could be Big: Decentralized Web Standard Under Development by W3C

#7

Post by EGreg » Fri, May 06, 2011, 5:34 PM UTC

freenet and other services already do this. You can already use your browser to browse freenet, if you get the freenet program. They recommend using Chrome in Incognito mode for maximum privacy.

And it is impervious to DNS takedowns and you can even set up a darknet. It's used in China a lot. Also Perfect Dark is used. They operate on distributed hash tables. The problem is that without a central server, the only way you can connect to the hive is by hoping one of the last known hosts is still up. It also needs to use heuristics for routing.

Re: This Could be Big: Decentralized Web Standard Under Development by W3C

#8

Post by sp332 » Fri, May 06, 2011, 5:35 PM UTC

phlux wrote: post #3

I wonder how easily man-in-the-middle attacks via node spoofing would be. You masquerade as a node by re-hosting their content and you capture any other client that accesses your proxy of that information.

Oh, it's simple! All we need is for each node to sign their content with a private key. Then everyone can check the validity of the content with the originating node's public key, even if it comes from some untrusted intermediary.

Hm, now all we need is a centralized server to distribute the public keys securely. But that's a lot of keys (one for every node), so let's use a distributed system... oh wait :)

Re: This Could be Big: Decentralized Web Standard Under Development by W3C

#9

Post by zyfo » Fri, May 06, 2011, 5:48 PM UTC

codemechanic wrote: post #4

Tonido ( http://www.tonido.com ) is a pioneer in this space. They have invented the model much before opera unit. The cool thing is that Tonido also provides a decentralized openid to end users. Firefox should buy Tonido. It will change the industry if it happens and the way people share information. I probably may be little ahead. If you think deeply it will make sense.

Do you work for Tonido? If you do, please provide a disclaimer. What you are doing is borderline spamming. See his comments for yourself [0]

If I'm wrong, I apologize profusely in advance.

EDIT: Parent does work for Tonido [1]. This is spamming.

0: http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=codemechanic

1: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=643833

Re: This Could be Big: Decentralized Web Standard Under Development by W3C

#10

Post by xtacy » Fri, May 06, 2011, 6:00 PM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #7

freenet and other services already do this. You can already use your browser to browse freenet, if you get the freenet program. They recommend using Chrome in Incognito mode for maximum privacy. And it is impervious to DNS takedowns and you can even set up a darknet. It's used in China a lot. Also Perfect Dark is used. They operate on distributed hash tables. The problem is that without a central server, the only way…

Yes, there are a ton of other overlays that do p2p. The advantage of a browser is that no one needs to download/install any software to avail p2p features.