The Legacy of Peer-to-Peer Systems
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The Legacy of Peer-to-Peer Systems
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Re: The Legacy of Peer-to-Peer Systems
#2What happened to peer-to-peer as a technological concept? Actually, we still use a lot of that technology.
Re: The Legacy of Peer-to-Peer Systems
#3What 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, and as useful, as ever. It's just that the relative percentage of online users with actual internet connections has shrunk. The absolute number of people with real computers and connections has not shrunk.
Re: The Legacy of Peer-to-Peer Systems
#4What happened to peer-to-peer as a technological concept? Actually, we still use a lot of that technology.
It became... boring technology.
Re: The Legacy of Peer-to-Peer Systems
#5What happened to peer-to-peer as a technological concept? Actually, we still use a lot of that technology.
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 help less fortunate nodes talk to each other.
These days a much larger fraction of computing devices are on battery, on expensive networks like cellular, and can't really tolerate being part of a DHT. Increasing use of NAT/Masquerading makes a harder (and a support nightmare) to accept incoming packets from new peers.
One solution to this is to add a "superpeer" to a router distribution like OpenWRT, or sell the "plug/wallwart" to help. That way a cheap (under $100) computer could build reputation with it's peers, accept incoming packets form new peers, provide some storage, and keep up with DHT maintenance. Then low power and/or expensive network peers could just check their "home" superpeer and get what they need quickly with minimal bandwidth and power.
Re: The Legacy of Peer-to-Peer Systems
#6What happened to peer-to-peer as a technological concept? Actually, we still use a lot of that technology.
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Re: The Legacy of Peer-to-Peer Systems
#7What 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…
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 aren't openly connected to the internet, you don't casually leak your computer's IP to the random strangers you're interacting with (at least when we're talking about a NAT you share with other people, not just your ISP box's NAT) and the amount of harm they can actually do to you is significantly lower.
In the end I think the internet would actually be a significantly better place security-wise for p2p if IPs weren't directly routable by default, and NAT with all its limitations gives you mostly that.
Re: The Legacy of Peer-to-Peer Systems
#8> Coin generation and distribution, particularly when coins can be traded for fiat currency or goods, creates an incentive mechanism to keep the P2P system running.
Ability to trade for fiat currency proved to be a mixed blessing at best, and a downfall at worst, of this approach. When a system is so lucrative as a vehicle for ponzi schemes, it inevitably gets hijacked, and becomes unable to serve its declared purpose.
Re: The Legacy of Peer-to-Peer Systems
#9What happened to peer-to-peer as a technological concept? Actually, we still use a lot of that technology.
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 my mind, a superpeer runs the same software as a peer, but does more work because it can. It should be easier to maintain than a full server. I’m taking about the difference between:
A) manage a mastodon node, with its own redis, PostgreSQL, web server, object storage, etc
And
B) run BitTorrent in the background on your gaming PC to seed the latest cut of the niche documentary you’re working on
There’s a lot of interesting self-hosting projects happening, but they tend to focus on helping you run kubernetes or a similar container orchestrator. That’s still way more complex than an executable.
I think we need things to get a bit more opinionated again…
Re: The Legacy of Peer-to-Peer Systems
#10P2P 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.