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The biggest thing holding back p2p/"truly decentralized" networks (in my opinion) are NAT/Firewalls. You cannot reliably get past them on the inside without man

The biggest thing holding back p2p/"truly decentralized" networks (in my opinion) are NAT/Firewalls. You cannot reliably get past them on the inside without manual configuration. There's no way you can convince millions of people to try to port forward, and UPnP is very hit or miss. If that was solved, lightweight applications like 1:1 messaging could easily be fully peer to peer/decentralized/trustless.

lylecubed 8y ago
How does bittorrent get around this? It isn't particularly troubled by nats or firewalls unless you live on a college campus.
- ReverseCold 8y ago
  The nice people you're downloading from have their ports forwarded. If possible, most clients try to use UPnP, but it doesn't always work.
WJW 8y ago
That is definitely a thing hindering adoption, but if there was really a big demand for decentralization, they would have been gone already. There are many more things holding back decentralized networks like the difficulty in filtering spam without easy coordinated effort, fixing network wide search and efficient monetization of content for creators.
- ReverseCold 8y ago
  Yes, there definitely are other problems. For spam, you can have centralized blocklists that people can subscribe to. The iOS version of whatever would need it anyway to follow the App Store guidelines. If you feel you're being censored, unsubscribe from the list. Alternatively (or in addition to that), have everyone publicly publish who they blocked, and then trust what your friends or friend of friends blocked. Network wide search is a problem, yes, but for chat (which I really want to be decentralized :( ) it doesn't matter too much. Monetization for content creators also doesn't matter for chat. So maybe I should rephrase my initial comment: Lack of NAT/Firewall bypass is the largest (and maybe only) problem needed to be solved for decentralized chat.
AndrewUnmuted 8y ago
This is an interesting thought. Even more interesting was what I learned recently while trying to circumvent this issue. Last week I encountered a similar concern in a project I am working on for UWP. I wasn't sure how to help the user open up the necessary ports. Then I discovered that one can submit in the UWP application manifest the port ranges that the app needs to function properly. Whenever a user installs the app, the Windows Firewall tool opens a dialog asking if it should open the port ranges. As someone who typically works in Unix derived environments, this was a delightful surprise.
- ReverseCold 8y ago
  > the Windows Firewall tool opens a dialog asking if it should open the port ranges This is neat, but there are also network level firewalls and NAT that people are usually behind :(

lylecubed 8y ago

How does bittorrent get around this? It isn't particularly troubled by nats or firewalls unless you live on a college campus.

ReverseCold 8y ago
The nice people you're downloading from have their ports forwarded. If possible, most clients try to use UPnP, but it doesn't always work.

WJW 8y ago

That is definitely a thing hindering adoption, but if there was really a big demand for decentralization, they would have been gone already. There are many more things holding back decentralized networks like the difficulty in filtering spam without easy coordinated effort, fixing network wide search and efficient monetization of content for creators.

ReverseCold 8y ago
Yes, there definitely are other problems. For spam, you can have centralized blocklists that people can subscribe to. The iOS version of whatever would need it anyway to follow the App Store guidelines. If you feel you're being censored, unsubscribe from the list. Alternatively (or in addition to that), have everyone publicly publish who they blocked, and then trust what your friends or friend of friends blocked. Network wide search is a problem, yes, but for chat (which I really want to be decentralized :( ) it doesn't matter too much. Monetization for content creators also doesn't matter for chat. So maybe I should rephrase my initial comment: Lack of NAT/Firewall bypass is the largest (and maybe only) problem needed to be solved for decentralized chat.

AndrewUnmuted 8y ago

This is an interesting thought. Even more interesting was what I learned recently while trying to circumvent this issue. Last week I encountered a similar concern in a project I am working on for UWP. I wasn't sure how to help the user open up the necessary ports. Then I discovered that one can submit in the UWP application manifest the port ranges that the app needs to function properly. Whenever a user installs the app, the Windows Firewall tool opens a dialog asking if it should open the port ranges. As someone who typically works in Unix derived environments, this was a delightful surprise.

ReverseCold 8y ago
> the Windows Firewall tool opens a dialog asking if it should open the port ranges This is neat, but there are also network level firewalls and NAT that people are usually behind :(