5 ms·
"use a P2P protocol instead". Actually, just like "the cloud" is just someone else's computer, "P2P" is just someone else's server.
by fiatjaf 9y ago
"use a P2P protocol instead".
Actually, just like "the cloud" is just someone else's computer, "P2P" is just someone else's server.
- JetSpiegel 9y agoP2P is not like the cloud. It's someone else's computer, but you don't know nor care what the exact machine you are connecting to because they are mostly untrusted.
- fiatjaf 9y agoI just made an analogy, didn't say it was the same thing as the cloud. My point was that in a P2P architecture you must be a server, everyone else must be a server. And being a server is costly. There must be incentives for someone to be a server, and that's not easy. I actually don't remember a single P2P protocol or framework that has solved that problem yet. Perhaps Bitcoin -- for miners only, not for normal nodes.
- loup-vaillant 9y agoIt appears BitTorrent solved the problem well enough. There's already an incentive to share, because nodes who don't are eventually ignored by the others (if I recall correctly). As for the operating costs… they don't seem very high unless you're operating a tracker. I mean, it's just a matter of running a BitTorrent client, and not even all the time (unless you want to reliably seed something). The real problem there is the asymmetry of the bandwidth. If we had as much upload as we had download, we wouldn't have any reason not to shoot for a 1:1 ratio.
- loup-vaillant 9y agoP2P is everyone else's server. Each peer pulls its own weight. This is different from relying on a single entity.
- fiatjaf 9y agoRelying on others is fine, the problem is when someone relies on you. Please see my answer to the other comment.
- loup-vaillant 9y ago> the problem is when someone relies on you I'm not sure what you're getting at. The problem is only magnified with the web: there's only one seed. If a site is down, it's down, and you can only hope Google cache or the web archive got a copy. That problem is never worse with P2P protocols.
- WJW 9y agoThat is only valid when all nodes have an equal chance of being down. Big websites have entire teams dedicated to keeping their site online, so even though it's centralized, youtube is actually a very stable website. A torrent with one seeding peer (or an IPFS object where only one node has it pinned) can potentially disappear if a single machine has a disk failure.
- loup-vaillant 9y agoThe basic assumption is independence, so I'm not even considering centralised hosting by Amazon or Alphabet. I am also assuming that if someone cares at all about seeding something, they will make sure it's not down too often.