4 ms·

But if you're doing that then those nodes could also implement the store-and-forward aspect of p2p matrix, which comes with its own non-IPFS discovery and thus

But if you're doing that then those nodes could also implement the store-and-forward aspect of p2p matrix, which comes with its own non-IPFS discovery and thus solves the discovery problem. libp2p is what IPFS is built on, not the other way round.

rglullis 6y ago
I think I am failing to get my idea through. I am thinking more in the sense of having IPFS as a way to increase redundancy of nodes that might be able to serve some media. Yes, discovery is not an issue for matrix. But p2p matrix on its own is not able to say "oh, your contact is sending you a message that contains a 10GB file, let me see if I can find other nodes that have this file already and get it from the swarm" 10GB is an exaggeration, but picture a group sharing hundreds of silly videos a day and you already can distribute the load quite a bit, no?
- Groxx 6y ago
  Anime-over-IRC can hit 10GB files pretty easily. I wouldn't label it an exaggeration so much as "uncommon". I do like the idea of automatically deduplicating every shared gif tho, which would happen automatically since it's content-addressed.
- vertex-four 6y ago
  Yes, possibly this could be an optimisation; although then you get to worry about leaking information about your group's contents to the world - anything you send, other clients in your group will ask random servers on the internet for, by a globally identifiable hash. In the best case, this just leaks my friends' meme sharing habits - in the worst case, this announces to the world "I am in a group sharing materials that my Government thinks are dangerous". If someone posts an original file to a public group and a private group, then anyone who downloads that file who isn't in the public group obviously knows that person well enough to be in a private group with them, leaking group membership metadata. And so on. Random identifiers for each instance of sharing a file to a group would thus be needed, reducing the usefulness of this optimisation quite a bit, where e.g. using the results of the group's p2p matrix discovery mechanism as your peer list to download blocks from has much the same results.
  - rglullis 6y ago
    You are right about the problem of leaking metadata - just by asking for the file reveals to the world that you know about it. However, this is something that can be fixed on IPFS itself, and I believe it is even in their roadmap: the idea of adding "friend peers". Your IPFS node could ask for sensitive files to this privileged list of nodes only. So, your client can have a simple logic: if you have e2e encrypted message with IPFS-linked media, ask only the group member peers about the contents of the file. Messages that are not e2e (or marked as non-sensitive) can be asked to the global IPFS swarm.
    - vertex-four 6y ago
      Sure, if IPFS gets that feature, maybe it's worth it. (Although maybe not - at that point IPFS is just an overweight tooling for downloading files from a list of known peers block by block.) I wouldn't hold my breath though.
      - rglullis 6y ago
        > at that point IPFS is just an overweight tooling... Only if you assume that your only use case is to have private communications. There are a lot of use cases and jurisdictions where sharing files do not have to be private and would benefit a lot from having redundant nodes doing the distribution. The tooling is already there, why not benefit from it?
        vertex-four 6y ago
        There are no jurisdictions where all possible information can be shared safely without hiding it. And IMO, software should maintain privacy by default - doing something less private should involve actively opting into that. Matrix, for example, creates e2e encrypted rooms by default, and even for non-e2e rooms, it doesn't announce the contents of the rooms to unrelated servers. If you want to publish the fact that you're downloading a file to the world, you should have to actively opt into doing so, every time - you should treat this like reporting your downloads to your Government voluntarily.

rglullis 6y ago

I think I am failing to get my idea through. I am thinking more in the sense of having IPFS as a way to increase redundancy of nodes that might be able to serve some media. Yes, discovery is not an issue for matrix. But p2p matrix on its own is not able to say "oh, your contact is sending you a message that contains a 10GB file, let me see if I can find other nodes that have this file already and get it from the swarm" 10GB is an exaggeration, but picture a group sharing hundreds of silly videos a day and you already can distribute the load quite a bit, no?

Groxx 6y ago
Anime-over-IRC can hit 10GB files pretty easily. I wouldn't label it an exaggeration so much as "uncommon". I do like the idea of automatically deduplicating every shared gif tho, which would happen automatically since it's content-addressed.
vertex-four 6y ago
Yes, possibly this could be an optimisation; although then you get to worry about leaking information about your group's contents to the world - anything you send, other clients in your group will ask random servers on the internet for, by a globally identifiable hash. In the best case, this just leaks my friends' meme sharing habits - in the worst case, this announces to the world "I am in a group sharing materials that my Government thinks are dangerous". If someone posts an original file to a public group and a private group, then anyone who downloads that file who isn't in the public group obviously knows that person well enough to be in a private group with them, leaking group membership metadata. And so on. Random identifiers for each instance of sharing a file to a group would thus be needed, reducing the usefulness of this optimisation quite a bit, where e.g. using the results of the group's p2p matrix discovery mechanism as your peer list to download blocks from has much the same results.
- rglullis 6y ago
  You are right about the problem of leaking metadata - just by asking for the file reveals to the world that you know about it. However, this is something that can be fixed on IPFS itself, and I believe it is even in their roadmap: the idea of adding "friend peers". Your IPFS node could ask for sensitive files to this privileged list of nodes only. So, your client can have a simple logic: if you have e2e encrypted message with IPFS-linked media, ask only the group member peers about the contents of the file. Messages that are not e2e (or marked as non-sensitive) can be asked to the global IPFS swarm.
  - vertex-four 6y ago
    Sure, if IPFS gets that feature, maybe it's worth it. (Although maybe not - at that point IPFS is just an overweight tooling for downloading files from a list of known peers block by block.) I wouldn't hold my breath though.
    - rglullis 6y ago
      > at that point IPFS is just an overweight tooling... Only if you assume that your only use case is to have private communications. There are a lot of use cases and jurisdictions where sharing files do not have to be private and would benefit a lot from having redundant nodes doing the distribution. The tooling is already there, why not benefit from it?
      - vertex-four 6y ago
        There are no jurisdictions where all possible information can be shared safely without hiding it. And IMO, software should maintain privacy by default - doing something less private should involve actively opting into that. Matrix, for example, creates e2e encrypted rooms by default, and even for non-e2e rooms, it doesn't announce the contents of the rooms to unrelated servers. If you want to publish the fact that you're downloading a file to the world, you should have to actively opt into doing so, every time - you should treat this like reporting your downloads to your Government voluntarily.