5 ms·

With IPFS what are the costs to keep your site live?

theamk 8y ago
It is like torrent, so you need to have a seeder node all the time - it is called “pinning” in IPFS. There is a number of services, the price seems to be around $0.3/(gb*month)
- gitgud 8y ago
  How does that compare with AWS? Is IPFS worth using for a CDN? (apologies for the acronyms...)
  - neiman 8y ago
    AWS and IPFS are so different that you can't compare then. I'd say that the right comparison of IPFS is to BitTorrent.
    - jononor 8y ago
      If I am supposed to host my website on it, I want to know how much it would cost (for a given service level). Don't really care if the tech is more like butterflies or turtles...
      - blotter_paper 8y ago
        IPFS nodes generally cache data that has been accessed recently, so if your website is the most accessed content on IPFS you can host it for free just by sharing it once and users will have relatively quick access to it because nodes directly connected to them will probably have a cached copy already. If requests are rare, expect to host it yourself or pay a pinning service, and expect higher latency as users will be requesting content hosted multiple hops away. You should care whether the tech is butterflies or turtles, because you can't compare butterflies and turtles -- or you can, but the comparison breaks down when you ask which will get to an undefined point x quicker. If x is in the air, butterflies; if x is in the water, turtles.
    - icebraining 7y ago
      AWS S3 has bittorrent support...
  - agentofuser 8y ago
    If you pin to IPFS and then use a public http gateway like https://cloudflare-ipfs.com https://cloudflare-ipfs.com, which caches and distributes via their CDN, you'll have a good CDN alternative. If you just use IPFS directly with a non-CDN'd, non-cached http gateway, the latency will probably be prohibitive for regular web stuff.
    - gitgud 8y ago
      But isn't it like a torrent? where if more people are viewing the item, it can be served faster from more places, like torrent seeders?
      - agentofuser 8y ago
        Yes, definitely. I mean, you certainly get better bandwidth and latency depending on popularity and geographic diversity of seeders, and there are even youtube-alternative websites that host videos on IPFS. But for something like browsing from one page to the next, where the payload is small and you want <200ms latency, I think just the DHT lookup might already put you above that budget. I'm guessing though, haven't made any measurements.
        mtgx 7y ago
        Who gets <200ms latency anymore when Google analytics and FB pixel tracking scripts take more than that each and most websites have them?
        icebraining 7y ago
        Those scripts are loaded asynchronously; you can start seeing content before they are ready.
        geoah 7y ago
        In torrent when you download something you also announce yourself as a seeder. In ipfs afaik you have to explicitly pin something in order for your peer to be announced as a provider. This means that even if your content in ipfs is popular it won’t be fast.
- agentofuser 8y ago
  Yep. That is the price practiced by Pinata[1] after 1GB, and by Eternum[2] at the outset (no free tier). [1]: https://pinata.cloud/ https://pinata.cloud/ [2]: https://www.eternum.io/ https://www.eternum.io/
  - colemickens 8y ago
    I'm trying to learn more about IPFS for long term file storage. Do you know if these services are using "IPFS Cluster" or something like it to manage pins?
    - StavrosK 8y ago
      Eternum currently isn't, it's using an IPFS node. IPFS cluster might be a very good choice for pinning, I'll look into it and see if it can help.
      - StavrosK 8y ago
        Eternum is now using IPFS Cluster and should be greatly improved (I just pushed a bunch of bugfixes and significant improvements). Thanks for the tip!
        agentofuser 7y ago
        Wow, that was really fast, congrats! I'd love to have Eternum support on ipfs-deploy, btw. Please let me know if you'd like to submit a PR and need help.
        StavrosK 7y ago
        That'd be great! What sort of integration are you thinking? My JS is terrible but pinning stuff on Eternum is a simple HTTP call.
        agentofuser 7y ago
neiman 8y ago
Afaik. in the pinning method this tool uses, it costs nothing. But you can't be sure that it will really be always live (it depends on the good heart of the pinning service you used). If you want to really ensure it's live you should run at least one node that pins it yourself (or pay someone to do that)
- agentofuser 8y ago
  Yeah both Infura and Pinata are free for up to 1Gb or something like that, which is fine for most static websites and blogs. But those are startups, so I agree that for long-term permanence it's better to do some self-hosting down the line.

It is like torrent, so you need to have a seeder node all the time - it is called “pinning” in IPFS. There is a number of services, the price seems to be around $0.3/(gb*month)

gitgud 8y ago
How does that compare with AWS? Is IPFS worth using for a CDN? (apologies for the acronyms...)
- neiman 8y ago
  AWS and IPFS are so different that you can't compare then. I'd say that the right comparison of IPFS is to BitTorrent.
  - jononor 8y ago
    If I am supposed to host my website on it, I want to know how much it would cost (for a given service level). Don't really care if the tech is more like butterflies or turtles...
    - blotter_paper 8y ago
      IPFS nodes generally cache data that has been accessed recently, so if your website is the most accessed content on IPFS you can host it for free just by sharing it once and users will have relatively quick access to it because nodes directly connected to them will probably have a cached copy already. If requests are rare, expect to host it yourself or pay a pinning service, and expect higher latency as users will be requesting content hosted multiple hops away. You should care whether the tech is butterflies or turtles, because you can't compare butterflies and turtles -- or you can, but the comparison breaks down when you ask which will get to an undefined point x quicker. If x is in the air, butterflies; if x is in the water, turtles.
  - icebraining 7y ago
    AWS S3 has bittorrent support...
- agentofuser 8y ago
  If you pin to IPFS and then use a public http gateway like https://cloudflare-ipfs.com https://cloudflare-ipfs.com, which caches and distributes via their CDN, you'll have a good CDN alternative. If you just use IPFS directly with a non-CDN'd, non-cached http gateway, the latency will probably be prohibitive for regular web stuff.
  - gitgud 8y ago
    But isn't it like a torrent? where if more people are viewing the item, it can be served faster from more places, like torrent seeders?
    - agentofuser 8y ago
      Yes, definitely. I mean, you certainly get better bandwidth and latency depending on popularity and geographic diversity of seeders, and there are even youtube-alternative websites that host videos on IPFS. But for something like browsing from one page to the next, where the payload is small and you want <200ms latency, I think just the DHT lookup might already put you above that budget. I'm guessing though, haven't made any measurements.
      - mtgx 7y ago
        Who gets <200ms latency anymore when Google analytics and FB pixel tracking scripts take more than that each and most websites have them?
        icebraining 7y ago
        Those scripts are loaded asynchronously; you can start seeing content before they are ready.
      - geoah 7y ago
        In torrent when you download something you also announce yourself as a seeder. In ipfs afaik you have to explicitly pin something in order for your peer to be announced as a provider. This means that even if your content in ipfs is popular it won’t be fast.
agentofuser 8y ago
Yep. That is the price practiced by Pinata[1] after 1GB, and by Eternum[2] at the outset (no free tier). [1]: https://pinata.cloud/ https://pinata.cloud/ [2]: https://www.eternum.io/ https://www.eternum.io/
- colemickens 8y ago
  I'm trying to learn more about IPFS for long term file storage. Do you know if these services are using "IPFS Cluster" or something like it to manage pins?
  - StavrosK 8y ago
    Eternum currently isn't, it's using an IPFS node. IPFS cluster might be a very good choice for pinning, I'll look into it and see if it can help.
    - StavrosK 8y ago
      Eternum is now using IPFS Cluster and should be greatly improved (I just pushed a bunch of bugfixes and significant improvements). Thanks for the tip!
      - agentofuser 7y ago
        Wow, that was really fast, congrats! I'd love to have Eternum support on ipfs-deploy, btw. Please let me know if you'd like to submit a PR and need help.
        StavrosK 7y ago
        That'd be great! What sort of integration are you thinking? My JS is terrible but pinning stuff on Eternum is a simple HTTP call.
        agentofuser 7y ago

neiman 8y ago

Afaik. in the pinning method this tool uses, it costs nothing. But you can't be sure that it will really be always live (it depends on the good heart of the pinning service you used). If you want to really ensure it's live you should run at least one node that pins it yourself (or pay someone to do that)

agentofuser 8y ago
Yeah both Infura and Pinata are free for up to 1Gb or something like that, which is fine for most static websites and blogs. But those are startups, so I agree that for long-term permanence it's better to do some self-hosting down the line.