5 ms·

This is just... weird. We have centralized services for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that they're more reliable than decentralized systems. Phones get

This is just... weird. We have centralized services for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that they're more reliable than decentralized systems. Phones get lost, stolen, drowned, and crushed. People drive through tunnels or into mountains without cell signal. Batteries die. It seems patently absurd to think that a P2P network of handsets is somehow going to replace The Datacenter, on any timescale.

narag 7y ago
It seems patently absurd to think that a P2P network of handsets is somehow going to replace The Datacenter, on any timescale. Have you noticed that each and every piece of the web has its antiparticle? The original web was the browser with links and simple graphical presentation, some server scripts and SQL databases. Then we've had single page applications in which links lead nowhere, nosql, serverless. This is like extreme serverless or webless. If you can think of another basic web element, you can invent some new anti-paradigm that will be loved, hated and discussed endlessly over here.
jdietrich 7y ago
I was sufficiently annoyed by this article that I actually shouted "BATTERIES, YOU IDIOT". Google said in 2011 that a single Google search uses about 0.3Wh of power. A typical mobile phone battery has a capacity of about 12Wh. Peer-to-peer systems are almost always less efficient than client-server systems, often by a large factor. You do the math as to whether a peer-to-peer internet based on mobile phones is even remotely viable. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/09/technology/google-details-and-defends-its-use-of-electricity.html https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/09/technology/google-details...
rschulman 7y ago
There are lots of places where we have trained ourselves to think that timeliness is the most important quality when it absolutely isn't. If I drive into a tunnel and my family has to wait an hour before they see the new photo of my son, that is not an epic tragedy. There are also maturing p2p ways to help solve this problem. If my sister gets my update with the new photo before I hit the tunnel, she can share it with my mom whenever they manage to connect.
- stickfigure 7y ago
  If I drive into a tunnel and my family has to wait an hour before they see the new photo of my son That's the experience we have right now, with centralized servers. With a P2P system the experience is: My sister sees that I uploaded a new picture, tries to click on it, and gets some opaque timeout error because unbeknownst to her I drove into a tunnel. Depending on whether or not my phone is destroyed in an accident before I emerge, she may never see the picture. Unreliable distributed systems look intermittently and unpredictably broken to users.
danans 7y ago
> People drive through tunnels or into mountains without cell signal. Isn't this an argument for more locally hosted services?
RodgerTheGreat 7y ago
Maybe there are just certain things that we currently store in datacenters out of convenience which we shouldn't be putting there. Why should my personal communications be stored in cleartext on someone else's servers? (Aside from letting that "someone" mine them for personal information.) Why should my todo list live on someone else's servers? That file that I really just want to move from one computer in my house to another, but which locked-down mobile operating systems push me toward bouncing against a remote data center? Far too many applications and services will only function when attached to an irreplaceable centralized server someone else controls. If the cloud is just a supplementary resource where you back up or distribute opaque, encrypted files, or crunch an occasional workload, for a moderate fee, you could have your reliability without the lockin. I think mesh networking might be nice for a handful of applications, but it isn't even the core of the issue here: it's about whether your computers are glorified dumb terminals for someone else's computer, or whether your computers are machines that can function as islands when they need to.
- theamk 7y ago
  Well, full text search is really power hungry. Once you have few gigs of email, your phone's local full text engine is going to get too slow. This is a good reason to keep email on the remote server. That said, your personal communication will be stored on the servers encrypted if you use encrypted chat like Whatsapp or Telegram. I am not sure why you had to use cloud server when sending files over LAN. I've uploaded videos directly to iOS over ftp server, and Android has tons of apps to sync data back and forth, all locally. I am not sure why your TODO list needs a central server -- Simplenote does not require login, and it totally happy to keep everything locally. There are integrated note apps as well. So to summarize: everything is there already. But people prefer to choose a simple solution and use cloud-based service, instead of doing a little bit of work and creating "machines which can function as islands"
GregoryPerry 7y ago
That's pretty much the intent and role of IPFS though. Based upon current saturation statistics for mobile telephone handsets (which has to be 95%+ for every person 15+ years old in the USA at least), you're only a few meters away from another handset that's likely GPS enabled. Why in the world do we need centralized mobile carrier infrastructure when mesh-based P2P comms are now possible over ISM band networks? An IPFS + 900MHz P2P mobile chipset addon + GPS-based geographical routed P2P communications transport for handsets (and rapid adoption of the same) is all it would take to eliminate the mobile carriers. This could be as simple as a BLE-enabled device or phone case...
- marcinzm 7y ago
  Doesn't GPS and the wireless antenna use a decent amount of power and thus cut battery life quiet a bit if they're being used constantly?
- foobarian 7y ago
  Mesh networks unfortunately scale really poorly [1]: O(1/sqrt(N)). You really need a fat backbone to turn the topology into something more like a hypercube. [1] https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/papers/grid:mobicom01/paper.pdf https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/papers/grid:mobicom01/paper.pdf
  - GregoryPerry 7y ago
    ...for static ad hoc networks. GPS-based geographical routing would be a dynamic, constantly changing optimized mesh.
    - foobarian 7y ago
      Type of routing doesn't make a difference for the above result. The main assumption is that node-pairs that want to communicate have random locations. That leads to O(N) pairs trying to go across O(sqrt(N)) links in the middle. In practice who knows what kind of communication patterns you would get. Applications would probably evolve around the long distance limit if it existed, but it's hard to imagine not having backbone links. Most likely the meshes would stay relatively localized (and I believe there exist a number of regional wireless mesh networks out there serving real customers).

narag 7y ago

It seems patently absurd to think that a P2P network of handsets is somehow going to replace The Datacenter, on any timescale. Have you noticed that each and every piece of the web has its antiparticle? The original web was the browser with links and simple graphical presentation, some server scripts and SQL databases. Then we've had single page applications in which links lead nowhere, nosql, serverless. This is like extreme serverless or webless. If you can think of another basic web element, you can invent some new anti-paradigm that will be loved, hated and discussed endlessly over here.

jdietrich 7y ago

I was sufficiently annoyed by this article that I actually shouted "BATTERIES, YOU IDIOT". Google said in 2011 that a single Google search uses about 0.3Wh of power. A typical mobile phone battery has a capacity of about 12Wh. Peer-to-peer systems are almost always less efficient than client-server systems, often by a large factor. You do the math as to whether a peer-to-peer internet based on mobile phones is even remotely viable. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/09/technology/google-details-and-defends-its-use-of-electricity.html https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/09/technology/google-details...

rschulman 7y ago

There are lots of places where we have trained ourselves to think that timeliness is the most important quality when it absolutely isn't. If I drive into a tunnel and my family has to wait an hour before they see the new photo of my son, that is not an epic tragedy. There are also maturing p2p ways to help solve this problem. If my sister gets my update with the new photo before I hit the tunnel, she can share it with my mom whenever they manage to connect.

stickfigure 7y ago
If I drive into a tunnel and my family has to wait an hour before they see the new photo of my son That's the experience we have right now, with centralized servers. With a P2P system the experience is: My sister sees that I uploaded a new picture, tries to click on it, and gets some opaque timeout error because unbeknownst to her I drove into a tunnel. Depending on whether or not my phone is destroyed in an accident before I emerge, she may never see the picture. Unreliable distributed systems look intermittently and unpredictably broken to users.

danans 7y ago

> People drive through tunnels or into mountains without cell signal. Isn't this an argument for more locally hosted services?

RodgerTheGreat 7y ago

Maybe there are just certain things that we currently store in datacenters out of convenience which we shouldn't be putting there. Why should my personal communications be stored in cleartext on someone else's servers? (Aside from letting that "someone" mine them for personal information.) Why should my todo list live on someone else's servers? That file that I really just want to move from one computer in my house to another, but which locked-down mobile operating systems push me toward bouncing against a remote data center? Far too many applications and services will only function when attached to an irreplaceable centralized server someone else controls. If the cloud is just a supplementary resource where you back up or distribute opaque, encrypted files, or crunch an occasional workload, for a moderate fee, you could have your reliability without the lockin. I think mesh networking might be nice for a handful of applications, but it isn't even the core of the issue here: it's about whether your computers are glorified dumb terminals for someone else's computer, or whether your computers are machines that can function as islands when they need to.

theamk 7y ago
Well, full text search is really power hungry. Once you have few gigs of email, your phone's local full text engine is going to get too slow. This is a good reason to keep email on the remote server. That said, your personal communication will be stored on the servers encrypted if you use encrypted chat like Whatsapp or Telegram. I am not sure why you had to use cloud server when sending files over LAN. I've uploaded videos directly to iOS over ftp server, and Android has tons of apps to sync data back and forth, all locally. I am not sure why your TODO list needs a central server -- Simplenote does not require login, and it totally happy to keep everything locally. There are integrated note apps as well. So to summarize: everything is there already. But people prefer to choose a simple solution and use cloud-based service, instead of doing a little bit of work and creating "machines which can function as islands"

GregoryPerry 7y ago

That's pretty much the intent and role of IPFS though. Based upon current saturation statistics for mobile telephone handsets (which has to be 95%+ for every person 15+ years old in the USA at least), you're only a few meters away from another handset that's likely GPS enabled. Why in the world do we need centralized mobile carrier infrastructure when mesh-based P2P comms are now possible over ISM band networks? An IPFS + 900MHz P2P mobile chipset addon + GPS-based geographical routed P2P communications transport for handsets (and rapid adoption of the same) is all it would take to eliminate the mobile carriers. This could be as simple as a BLE-enabled device or phone case...

marcinzm 7y ago
Doesn't GPS and the wireless antenna use a decent amount of power and thus cut battery life quiet a bit if they're being used constantly?
foobarian 7y ago
Mesh networks unfortunately scale really poorly [1]: O(1/sqrt(N)). You really need a fat backbone to turn the topology into something more like a hypercube. [1] https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/papers/grid:mobicom01/paper.pdf https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/papers/grid:mobicom01/paper.pdf
- GregoryPerry 7y ago
  ...for static ad hoc networks. GPS-based geographical routing would be a dynamic, constantly changing optimized mesh.
  - foobarian 7y ago
    Type of routing doesn't make a difference for the above result. The main assumption is that node-pairs that want to communicate have random locations. That leads to O(N) pairs trying to go across O(sqrt(N)) links in the middle. In practice who knows what kind of communication patterns you would get. Applications would probably evolve around the long distance limit if it existed, but it's hard to imagine not having backbone links. Most likely the meshes would stay relatively localized (and I believe there exist a number of regional wireless mesh networks out there serving real customers).