7 ms·

Arc – A P2P CDN that runs in the browser

102 points by sansui12 5y ago

pcr910303 5y ago
It's an interesting idea. I did thinking it looked pretty scammy (felt like a crypto miner), but... It does feels different in that it doesn't use any user's bandwidth if the site doesn't monetize it and it mandates a UI with an opt-off button if the site does monetize it and uses the user's bandwidth. But I'm not sure if this is ever gonna work... will a nearby user device really give the content that I need than a datacenter...? There's no mention on the FAQ page how it prevents from a fake user sending malicious scripts across the network as well.
- bityard 5y ago
  I wonder how long it will take before arc.io appears on the same content blacklists as ads and cryptominers?
  - vbezhenar 5y ago
    https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/5771 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/5771 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/pull/8874 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/pull/8874 this might be of interest to you.
    - gurchik 5y ago
      So uBlock added them to the abuse list for not being opt-in, so the developer responds with adding opt-in only if you're using an adblock. Way to completely miss the intent of the rule.
- grun 5y ago
  > There's no mention on the FAQ page how it prevents from a fake user sending malicious scripts across the network as well. All content is fragmented, encrypted, and hashed before it's distributed across the network. If a peer ever receives a file piece from a peer and that piece's hash doesn't match the expected hash, it's dropped along with the connection to that peer.
  - webmaven 5y ago
    > All content is fragmented, encrypted, and hashed before it's distributed across the network. If a peer ever receives a file piece from a peer and that piece's hash doesn't match the expected hash, it's dropped along with the connection to that peer. So, depending on the hashing algorithm, an adversary could use a hash collision to circumvent this, right?
goodpoint 5y ago
> Arc uses only a small portion of spare bandwidth, imperceptible CPU, 300MB of browser cache Sounds very scammy. Is this happening without user consent? What about privacy?
- franga2000 5y ago
  This is my first time hearing about it too, but I don't see what you see. Where is the scam? What about privacy? It seems like a good way of monetizing a site by creating something with intrinsic value to others (CDN capacity) out of something with next to no value to users (spare bandwidth). Sure beats the alternatives: - ads: value=user's money that they manipulate them into spending. Additionally, they usually track people relentlessly and in turn use that data to manipulate them even better. No value is created, just money is transferred with extra steps. - crypto miners: the value of (PoW) crypto is net negative (see environmental concerns), despite being profitable for some. They also decrease the user experience by draining batteries and slowing down computers. So no real value is created and negative value for users. - micro-donations: they just transfer something of value (money) from the user to the operator. Nothing is "created", so users are by definition losing money. You can argue that things should cost money, but that's a separate discussion - value for users is still negative. Of course I'd prefer this to be a vendor-neutral standard and not some private company, but none of the current "distributed web" solutions have gotten any serious level of adoption. This one actually got some attention since it's also a monetization platform - even if webmasters don't care about the distributed web idea, they still help get is closer.
  - fomine3 5y ago
    Be careful that providing upload bandwidth also means consuming battery. Radio on phone can't be sleep while uploading.
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    Using resources that belong to the user (CPU time, RAM, disk space, battery) for you own needs without user's consent is very questionable. On top of that, this p2p tools advertises the user's IP address to other peers without their consent. Furthermore, it allow other users to see what contents are cached and at what time in the day. "Sure beats the alternatives" is in no way less scammy.
dest 5y ago
I wonder what is the time to first byte for a given asset when the page loads for the first time. Establishing a webrtc connection takes several rtts to the tracker/signalling server and will always be longer than a plain CDN request. I think it's rather useful on subsequent page navigation then, when p2p connections are already established. What about partnering with browsers like Brave, that would embed it in many pages at once? Disclaimer: I work at Lumen/Streamroot, we do this for video.
- mishafb 5y ago
  Before this is loaded and completely ready, you probably load resources with your regular CDN
  - dest 5y ago
    So that you can seed it later, very probably
detaro 5y ago
Show HN 2 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28394888 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28394888
indolering 5y ago
PeerCDN tried this and was acqui-hired by Yahoo in 2013 and Peer5 did this for video but was acqui-hired by Microsoft. What about P2P CDN didn't work before?
- reitanqild 5y ago
  Lots of people would go to great lengths to secure a job at Microsoft, so I'm not sure if it counts like a failure, just not a runaway success.
- shacharz 5y ago
  Internal sources say Peer5 were not acqui-hired ;) But we took a very different direction than this or PeerCDN
- grun 5y ago
  PeerCDN was too early; the web wasn't ready yet. For example, to intercept network requests to serve them from the peer-to-peer network, a <![CDATA[ tag had to be inserted into the <head> of the document to block rendering of the subsequent document. Then, once the document had finished downloading, the page HTML was manually rendered so all assets (eg JS, CSS, images, etc tags) could be loaded via JS instead of the browser natively. This was both slow and resulted in empty white pages on load. Now? We have the Service Worker API. (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Service_Worker_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Service_Wor...) I'm not as familiar with Peer5's tech stack, so I can't speak there. But hi Shachar!
dhaavi 5y ago
So, if I run this on a server and fill my cache, can I then monitor other people browsing arc.io-enabled websites? I feel the privacy implications of such a technology haven’t been evaluated.
- grun 5y ago
  Great question! All cached data is both fragmented and encrypted. When a node sends data to another peer, it doesn't know 1) what data it's sending nor 2) which website that data is being sent for.
lvass 5y ago
It's scary how things like this can become invisible to the user. WebRTC is a great concept that could really improve decentralization, but so incredibly easy to misuse that it's absurdly irresponsible browser developers enable it by default. Remember how people went to jail for simply having certain p2p file sharing software running? All this one takes is opening a web page.
- leephillips 5y ago
  > Remember how people went to jail for simply having certain p2p file sharing software running? No. Do you have a link?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - lvass 5y ago
    https://www.reddit.com/r/torrents/comments/30jlz0/raided_after_using_tribler/ https://www.reddit.com/r/torrents/comments/30jlz0/raided_aft... Similar cases though they might require downloading something, perhaps innocent looking: https://www.propublica.org/article/prosecutors-dropping-child-porn-charges-after-software-tools-are-questioned https://www.propublica.org/article/prosecutors-dropping-chil... https://forum.emule-project.net/index.php?showtopic=161954 https://forum.emule-project.net/index.php?showtopic=161954 https://www.robertslawteam.com/criminal-defense-overview/articles/the-dangers-of-peer-to-peer-sharing-how-innocent-users-can-be-arrested-for-illegal-child-pornography/ https://www.robertslawteam.com/criminal-defense-overview/art... https://mashable.com/archive/child-porn-download https://mashable.com/archive/child-porn-download
    - leephillips 5y ago
      The story is about a raid, not jail, but point taken in any case. EDIT: Later he mentions being “released”, so I guess there was some jail involved.
- vbezhenar 5y ago
  What's so irreponsible about it? Any website can waste your download/upload/CPU/RAM/disk. WebRTC does not make anything worse, but rather allows for a plenty of useful applications, some of them might help to reduce centralization which is the plague of the web IMO.
ROARosen 5y ago
I wonder can't a simple `display: none` hide Arc's widget?
- grun 5y ago
  As a user, yep. But doing so as a website gets your Arc account banned and your websites blacklisted.
jopsen 5y ago
How does the performance compare?
baybal2 5y ago
Gnutella was painfully slow, and error prone even during its best times.
baybal2 5y ago
Since there is so much interest into turning a browser into a BT client basically for CDN purposes, check out this: https://github.com/webtorrent/webtorrent https://github.com/webtorrent/webtorrent Unwittingly, people who put the WebRTC into the browser turned Chrome into world's biggest file sharing network, and now the Genie is out of the bottle.
na85 5y ago
>Arc uses only a small portion of spare bandwidth, imperceptible CPU, 300MB of browser cache, and only runs when a device is connected to Wi-Fi or Ethernet. Cellular bandwidth is never used. Ugh, the arrogance. To think that you are somehow entitled to use my bandwidth and CPU power is such a sadly typical mindset today. Yet another reason to run NoScript.
- BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  And that's for each page that uses it I assume, so If you have 10 pages using Arc, that's not going to be imperceptible.
  - grun 5y ago
    Not quite. =] Arc coordinates and synchronizes across tabs (via an iframe). So Arc behaves identically whether you have one open tab with Arc or 100.
    - na85 5y ago
      Aren't tabs supposed to be sandboxed?
      - not_really 5y ago
        Sounds like the iframe is used to glue sandboxes together
      - fomine3 5y ago
        Origin should be sandboxed rather than tabs, isn't it?
    - BiteCode_dev 5y ago
      Nicely done.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Well, you're using CPU and bandwidth as long as you're using assets delivered with that CDN. Seems perfectly fair to me.
qeternity 5y ago
I have serious doubts that this is going to be remotely as performant as any major CDN.
agentdrtran 5y ago
anyone got an invite code? looks interesting
- grun 5y ago
  Of course! Shoot me an email at ansgar@arc. =]
sdze 5y ago
wonderful idea. What could possibly go wrong. /s
sam0x17 5y ago
Yeah I have to say I am for this in the vein of reducing centralization. Yes in a way it is akin to a crypto-miner, but the future internet could literally be distributed in this way, so props to them.
- bastawhiz 5y ago
  This doesn't actually decentralize anything, it relies on a central system to connect peers.
  - sam0x17 5y ago
    Ah, well, never mind then
azinman2 5y ago
So arrogant to monetize your website using your users in such a way. It’s one thing to show me ads, it’s another to use me as a node in a distributed CDN for which I gain no value, and everyone else does. It’s not even some kind of p2p situation I as a user opt into because I believe in the communal network. I hate this leechy behavior that has come to plague the internet for a while now. When it was all nerds it was glorious. Then the money came, and the bullies followed.
- samtheprogram 5y ago
  You gain the value of whatever service you’re using. It’s the same approach of monetizing a site with ads, except instead of “paying” for the site with your data or eyeballs, you’re paying with your bandwidth. I actually quite like this idea. Any site/app/etc that is free has to make money, at the very least to pay for infrastructure, and I find this a lot less invasive than surveillance, and not “arrogant” at all.
  - azinman2 5y ago
    Do you really this it’s an OR versus and AND? I cannot imagine sites doing this won’t also have ads. This is also not just bandwidth, but also 300mb of storage.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
mikeiz404 5y ago
Any one know what the typical latency is like? I see mentions of many points of presence and claims of pops being close (I assume due to the size and distributed nature of the peers) and therefore could be faster but no measurements or numbers in the FAQ.
alex23478 5y ago
> only runs when a device is connected to Wi-Fi or Ethernet. Cellular bandwidth is never used. This cannot be guaranteed. They seem to use the NetworkInformation API, which as of now is declared as experimental and straight up does not work on Firefox or more importantly on Safari (and therefore the whole iOS browser ecosystem). Apart from that, they're using IP ranges of mobile carriers for detection. [1] So let's say you're using iOS and a VPN while on the go. This will use your mobile data unless you're using an adblocker (since their service is only opt-in if you're using an adblocker) [2] [1] https://github.com/easylist/easylist/issues/7872 https://github.com/easylist/easylist/issues/7872 [2] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/pull/8874#issue-614223493 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/pull/8874#issue-6142...
grun 5y ago
Hey guys! I'm Ansgar (https://github.com/gruns https://github.com/gruns). I build Arc (http://arc.io/cdn http://arc.io/cdn). In the past, I built two of the world's largest YouTube to MP3 converters. In doing so, I learned the hard way 1) that distributing content at scale globally is painful and _expensive_ and 2) that I hate ads. So I built Arc. It's a two-sided content exchange. On one side, websites buy a faster, 10x cheaper peer-to-peer CDN. On the other side, websites make money without ads by contributing bandwidth to the peer-to-peer CDN. Arc connects the two, like Airbnb connects guests and hosts. As bandwidth capacity grows around the globe, we find ourselves in a world where people can share bandwidth both beneficially and imperceptibly. We see glimpses of that already today: Amazon shares bandwidth with Amazon Sidewalk, Microsoft shares bandwidth with Windows updates, etc. We build Arc for this world -- a post-adblock world -- to give sites a better, more ethical way to support themselves that doesn't bombard users with ads, suck up their personal data, and preserves their privacy. A few notes: - For sites that use Arc's CDN, users do not use upload bandwidth and Arc's widget isn't displayed. It's just a faster, 10x cheaper CDN in one <script> tag. That's it. (See https://arc.io/faq#do-users-upload-content-with-just-the-cdn https://arc.io/faq#do-users-upload-content-with-just-the-cdn) - For sites that monetize with Arc, we mandate that Arc's widget remains visible and intractable in the lower left corner of your website so users can learn about Arc and, if they so desire, opt out. (See https://arc.io/faq#can-i-move-modify-or-hide-arcs-widget https://arc.io/faq#can-i-move-modify-or-hide-arcs-widget) Additionally, Arc never activates on cellular connections; Wi-Fi and ethernet only. - If you elect to opt out (two clicks in Arc's widget), you're opted out of all sites with Arc. Please email me if you'd like an invite code to take Arc's CDN for a spin: ansgar@arc.io. It's 10x cheaper than Fastly, AWS, Google, etc. (See http://arc.io/cdn/ http://arc.io/cdn/). And I'd love to hear your thoughts! Feedback is how good products become great.
- catlifeonmars 5y ago
  I’m curious what your analysis of the equilibrium states of this model look like. I think it’s an interesting approach, but I’m not entirely convinced it’s sustainable. Edit: TL;DR; show me the math! :D
- easrng 5y ago
  How does Arc make P2P connections from a Service Worker? IIRC WebRTC isn't available.
zimbatm 5y ago
How stable is the CDN when the each node lifetime is 5 minutes? The likelihood of an ongoing request being cut off is fairly high. Nodes are also constantly in syncing state I assume.
- grun 5y ago
  Very! The lifetime of nodes is actually quite a bit longer than 5 minutes as the tab doesn't need to be foregrounded (which Google Analytics and others report as the end of the 'session'). That, and when a node comes online, it joins the network with the cache contents it had filled previously. So it joins the network warm, not cold and needing to be filled.
  - zimbatm 5y ago
    Interesting. Is the cache shared between all the websites that install this product? What happens to a HTTP request to a browser whenever they close their tab, is it retried on another browser?
jeroenhd 5y ago
> only runs when a device is connected to Wi-Fi or Ethernet. Cellular bandwidth is never used. That's interesting. How does the website possibly detect that I'm on a cellular network when I'm a) use Firefox (which doesn't implement the NetworkInformation API) and b) use a VPN to either a data center or my home server? What about iOS devices using Apple's pseudo-Tor (because Safari doesn't expose NetworkInformation either), or devices using tethered WiFi? I don't believe this claim at all. This makes me take all their other claims they make with a massive grain of salt as well. There's also the massive privacy issue: other people will know what websites you visit by simply using the P2P system, and the entire thing seems to be opt-in unless you use an adblocker. That last part shows that the devs know of the privacy issue but have decided to take the practical approach of not fixing the issue and only doing the bare minimum to remove their website from blocklists. It's only a matter of time before someone will make a tool that enumerates all IPs in the Arc network together with the content they've been served. This one is going onto my Pihole's blocklist...
- grun 5y ago
  Great questions! > How does the website possibly detect that I'm on a cellular network when I'm a) use Firefox (which doesn't implement the NetworkInformation API) and b) use a VPN to either a data center or my home server? Yep. An IP lookup is also done to see which AS the user is on. Eg an AWS IP vs a T-Mobile IP. We also do this to detect when people tether, as when tethering Chrome will report a Wi-Fi connection via the NetworkInforamtion API but it's Wi-Fi on top of an underlying cellular connection. > There's also the massive privacy issue: other people will know what websites you visit by simply using the P2P system All cached data is both fragmented and encrypted. When a node sends data to another peer, it's an encrypted fragment of a file and the sender doesn't know 1) what data it's sending nor 2) which website that data is being sent for.
a_paddy 5y ago
Under EU Directive 2009/136/EC a user's permission is required before Arc can store any data in their browser. Is Arc obtaining that permission, or just looking for forgiveness by allowing users to Opt-Out?
- MrStonedOne 5y ago
  Gonna have to specify a section/article of the directive you are referring to to get an answer from op/the creators. They aren't gonna read a thousand page directive to answer a question about legalities on a hacker news forum.
- a_paddy 5y ago
  a.k.a. The EU Cookie Law (doesn't just apply to Cookies) End users must be asked to Opt-In, if they reject then it's ok to deny them access to the page, just like if they reject Ads.
caseyross 5y ago
My first reaction was "yikes, that's super unethical to use users' bandwidth, storage, and processing power without their knowledge". But after thinking about it a lot, I have to say I've come around. As users, we all pay for upload bandwidth, and 99% of the time it's sitting there idly and providing literally no value to us or anyone else. That's because gosh darn it, we paid for it, so there's no way we're gonna let anyone else us it! But, if we stop thinking in binary terms of "my property" or "your property", and open our minds for a minute, what's so bad, really, about each of us donating a few resources to make the shared Internet run faster for everyone? If everyone does the same, we're all better off, and no one is worse off since the bandwidth was just going to waste anyway. Furthermore, the storage needed is already in use, storing the exact same content, just for your own exclusive use instead of everyone's, and the additional CPU cycles needed are surely much fewer than it takes to run the worthless ads your browser downloads everyday. I think of it as sort of the same logic as vaccination, where we ask people to pay a small private cost in a way that produces outsized benefits for society as a whole. In particular, each person gets an individual benefit much larger than the cost of the private resources they paid. Now, if the private resources aren't practically free like bandwidth or ROM, but actually expensive like capped data or mobile phone battery life, the ethical logic starts to get a bit murkier. However, I think it's definitely possible to build an effective peer-to-peer CDN without needing to touch those kind of scarce resources. The other reservation I have about this sort of project is that you really need to be able to trust the people running it to not abuse their control of the network (which really just means: other peoples' computers). That's, in my view, a much thornier issue than anything relating to the consumer end of the network. Let's hope the team will be able to successfully tackle both the technical and the human problems of a P2P CDN, and help push the Internet towards a more communal, sharing paradigm. Best of luck to them.
true_religion 5y ago
I wish I knew how this sort of CDN was created, so I could sponsor one explicitly for NSFW sites. It’s a large an existent market, but always one that’s ignored because of the complexities of dealing with it. However if you are already an insider, initial moderation isn’t so hard.
fomine3 5y ago
> Add Arc to your existing CDN(s) and your performance will only improve and you'll only save money. Seriously?

102 points by sansui12 5y ago

It's an interesting idea. I did thinking it looked pretty scammy (felt like a crypto miner), but... It does feels different in that it doesn't use any user's bandwidth if the site doesn't monetize it and it mandates a UI with an opt-off button if the site does monetize it and uses the user's bandwidth. But I'm not sure if this is ever gonna work... will a nearby user device really give the content that I need than a datacenter...? There's no mention on the FAQ page how it prevents from a fake user sending malicious scripts across the network as well.

bityard 5y ago
I wonder how long it will take before arc.io appears on the same content blacklists as ads and cryptominers?
- vbezhenar 5y ago
  https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/5771 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/5771 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/pull/8874 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/pull/8874 this might be of interest to you.
  - gurchik 5y ago
    So uBlock added them to the abuse list for not being opt-in, so the developer responds with adding opt-in only if you're using an adblock. Way to completely miss the intent of the rule.
grun 5y ago
> There's no mention on the FAQ page how it prevents from a fake user sending malicious scripts across the network as well. All content is fragmented, encrypted, and hashed before it's distributed across the network. If a peer ever receives a file piece from a peer and that piece's hash doesn't match the expected hash, it's dropped along with the connection to that peer.
- webmaven 5y ago
  > All content is fragmented, encrypted, and hashed before it's distributed across the network. If a peer ever receives a file piece from a peer and that piece's hash doesn't match the expected hash, it's dropped along with the connection to that peer. So, depending on the hashing algorithm, an adversary could use a hash collision to circumvent this, right?

goodpoint 5y ago

> Arc uses only a small portion of spare bandwidth, imperceptible CPU, 300MB of browser cache Sounds very scammy. Is this happening without user consent? What about privacy?

franga2000 5y ago
This is my first time hearing about it too, but I don't see what you see. Where is the scam? What about privacy? It seems like a good way of monetizing a site by creating something with intrinsic value to others (CDN capacity) out of something with next to no value to users (spare bandwidth). Sure beats the alternatives: - ads: value=user's money that they manipulate them into spending. Additionally, they usually track people relentlessly and in turn use that data to manipulate them even better. No value is created, just money is transferred with extra steps. - crypto miners: the value of (PoW) crypto is net negative (see environmental concerns), despite being profitable for some. They also decrease the user experience by draining batteries and slowing down computers. So no real value is created and negative value for users. - micro-donations: they just transfer something of value (money) from the user to the operator. Nothing is "created", so users are by definition losing money. You can argue that things should cost money, but that's a separate discussion - value for users is still negative. Of course I'd prefer this to be a vendor-neutral standard and not some private company, but none of the current "distributed web" solutions have gotten any serious level of adoption. This one actually got some attention since it's also a monetization platform - even if webmasters don't care about the distributed web idea, they still help get is closer.
- fomine3 5y ago
  Be careful that providing upload bandwidth also means consuming battery. Radio on phone can't be sleep while uploading.
- goodpoint 5y ago
  Using resources that belong to the user (CPU time, RAM, disk space, battery) for you own needs without user's consent is very questionable. On top of that, this p2p tools advertises the user's IP address to other peers without their consent. Furthermore, it allow other users to see what contents are cached and at what time in the day. "Sure beats the alternatives" is in no way less scammy.

dest 5y ago

I wonder what is the time to first byte for a given asset when the page loads for the first time. Establishing a webrtc connection takes several rtts to the tracker/signalling server and will always be longer than a plain CDN request. I think it's rather useful on subsequent page navigation then, when p2p connections are already established. What about partnering with browsers like Brave, that would embed it in many pages at once? Disclaimer: I work at Lumen/Streamroot, we do this for video.

mishafb 5y ago
Before this is loaded and completely ready, you probably load resources with your regular CDN
- dest 5y ago
  So that you can seed it later, very probably

detaro 5y ago

Show HN 2 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28394888 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28394888

indolering 5y ago

PeerCDN tried this and was acqui-hired by Yahoo in 2013 and Peer5 did this for video but was acqui-hired by Microsoft. What about P2P CDN didn't work before?

reitanqild 5y ago
Lots of people would go to great lengths to secure a job at Microsoft, so I'm not sure if it counts like a failure, just not a runaway success.
shacharz 5y ago
Internal sources say Peer5 were not acqui-hired ;) But we took a very different direction than this or PeerCDN
grun 5y ago
PeerCDN was too early; the web wasn't ready yet. For example, to intercept network requests to serve them from the peer-to-peer network, a <![CDATA[ tag had to be inserted into the <head> of the document to block rendering of the subsequent document. Then, once the document had finished downloading, the page HTML was manually rendered so all assets (eg JS, CSS, images, etc tags) could be loaded via JS instead of the browser natively. This was both slow and resulted in empty white pages on load. Now? We have the Service Worker API. (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Service_Worker_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Service_Wor...) I'm not as familiar with Peer5's tech stack, so I can't speak there. But hi Shachar!

dhaavi 5y ago

So, if I run this on a server and fill my cache, can I then monitor other people browsing arc.io-enabled websites? I feel the privacy implications of such a technology haven’t been evaluated.

grun 5y ago
Great question! All cached data is both fragmented and encrypted. When a node sends data to another peer, it doesn't know 1) what data it's sending nor 2) which website that data is being sent for.

lvass 5y ago

It's scary how things like this can become invisible to the user. WebRTC is a great concept that could really improve decentralization, but so incredibly easy to misuse that it's absurdly irresponsible browser developers enable it by default. Remember how people went to jail for simply having certain p2p file sharing software running? All this one takes is opening a web page.

leephillips 5y ago
> Remember how people went to jail for simply having certain p2p file sharing software running? No. Do you have a link?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- lvass 5y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/torrents/comments/30jlz0/raided_after_using_tribler/ https://www.reddit.com/r/torrents/comments/30jlz0/raided_aft... Similar cases though they might require downloading something, perhaps innocent looking: https://www.propublica.org/article/prosecutors-dropping-child-porn-charges-after-software-tools-are-questioned https://www.propublica.org/article/prosecutors-dropping-chil... https://forum.emule-project.net/index.php?showtopic=161954 https://forum.emule-project.net/index.php?showtopic=161954 https://www.robertslawteam.com/criminal-defense-overview/articles/the-dangers-of-peer-to-peer-sharing-how-innocent-users-can-be-arrested-for-illegal-child-pornography/ https://www.robertslawteam.com/criminal-defense-overview/art... https://mashable.com/archive/child-porn-download https://mashable.com/archive/child-porn-download
  - leephillips 5y ago
    The story is about a raid, not jail, but point taken in any case. EDIT: Later he mentions being “released”, so I guess there was some jail involved.
vbezhenar 5y ago
What's so irreponsible about it? Any website can waste your download/upload/CPU/RAM/disk. WebRTC does not make anything worse, but rather allows for a plenty of useful applications, some of them might help to reduce centralization which is the plague of the web IMO.

ROARosen 5y ago

I wonder can't a simple `display: none` hide Arc's widget?

grun 5y ago
As a user, yep. But doing so as a website gets your Arc account banned and your websites blacklisted.

jopsen 5y ago

How does the performance compare?

baybal2 5y ago

Gnutella was painfully slow, and error prone even during its best times.

baybal2 5y ago

Since there is so much interest into turning a browser into a BT client basically for CDN purposes, check out this: https://github.com/webtorrent/webtorrent https://github.com/webtorrent/webtorrent Unwittingly, people who put the WebRTC into the browser turned Chrome into world's biggest file sharing network, and now the Genie is out of the bottle.

na85 5y ago

>Arc uses only a small portion of spare bandwidth, imperceptible CPU, 300MB of browser cache, and only runs when a device is connected to Wi-Fi or Ethernet. Cellular bandwidth is never used. Ugh, the arrogance. To think that you are somehow entitled to use my bandwidth and CPU power is such a sadly typical mindset today. Yet another reason to run NoScript.

BiteCode_dev 5y ago
And that's for each page that uses it I assume, so If you have 10 pages using Arc, that's not going to be imperceptible.
- grun 5y ago
  Not quite. =] Arc coordinates and synchronizes across tabs (via an iframe). So Arc behaves identically whether you have one open tab with Arc or 100.
  - na85 5y ago
    Aren't tabs supposed to be sandboxed?
    - not_really 5y ago
      Sounds like the iframe is used to glue sandboxes together
    - fomine3 5y ago
      Origin should be sandboxed rather than tabs, isn't it?
  - BiteCode_dev 5y ago
    Nicely done.
sudosysgen 5y ago
Well, you're using CPU and bandwidth as long as you're using assets delivered with that CDN. Seems perfectly fair to me.

qeternity 5y ago

I have serious doubts that this is going to be remotely as performant as any major CDN.

agentdrtran 5y ago

anyone got an invite code? looks interesting

grun 5y ago
Of course! Shoot me an email at ansgar@arc. =]

sdze 5y ago

wonderful idea. What could possibly go wrong. /s

sam0x17 5y ago

Yeah I have to say I am for this in the vein of reducing centralization. Yes in a way it is akin to a crypto-miner, but the future internet could literally be distributed in this way, so props to them.

bastawhiz 5y ago
This doesn't actually decentralize anything, it relies on a central system to connect peers.
- sam0x17 5y ago
  Ah, well, never mind then

azinman2 5y ago

So arrogant to monetize your website using your users in such a way. It’s one thing to show me ads, it’s another to use me as a node in a distributed CDN for which I gain no value, and everyone else does. It’s not even some kind of p2p situation I as a user opt into because I believe in the communal network. I hate this leechy behavior that has come to plague the internet for a while now. When it was all nerds it was glorious. Then the money came, and the bullies followed.

samtheprogram 5y ago
You gain the value of whatever service you’re using. It’s the same approach of monetizing a site with ads, except instead of “paying” for the site with your data or eyeballs, you’re paying with your bandwidth. I actually quite like this idea. Any site/app/etc that is free has to make money, at the very least to pay for infrastructure, and I find this a lot less invasive than surveillance, and not “arrogant” at all.
- azinman2 5y ago
  Do you really this it’s an OR versus and AND? I cannot imagine sites doing this won’t also have ads. This is also not just bandwidth, but also 300mb of storage.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

mikeiz404 5y ago

Any one know what the typical latency is like? I see mentions of many points of presence and claims of pops being close (I assume due to the size and distributed nature of the peers) and therefore could be faster but no measurements or numbers in the FAQ.

alex23478 5y ago

> only runs when a device is connected to Wi-Fi or Ethernet. Cellular bandwidth is never used. This cannot be guaranteed. They seem to use the NetworkInformation API, which as of now is declared as experimental and straight up does not work on Firefox or more importantly on Safari (and therefore the whole iOS browser ecosystem). Apart from that, they're using IP ranges of mobile carriers for detection. [1] So let's say you're using iOS and a VPN while on the go. This will use your mobile data unless you're using an adblocker (since their service is only opt-in if you're using an adblocker) [2] [1] https://github.com/easylist/easylist/issues/7872 https://github.com/easylist/easylist/issues/7872 [2] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/pull/8874#issue-614223493 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/pull/8874#issue-6142...

grun 5y ago

Hey guys! I'm Ansgar (https://github.com/gruns https://github.com/gruns). I build Arc (http://arc.io/cdn http://arc.io/cdn). In the past, I built two of the world's largest YouTube to MP3 converters. In doing so, I learned the hard way 1) that distributing content at scale globally is painful and _expensive_ and 2) that I hate ads. So I built Arc. It's a two-sided content exchange. On one side, websites buy a faster, 10x cheaper peer-to-peer CDN. On the other side, websites make money without ads by contributing bandwidth to the peer-to-peer CDN. Arc connects the two, like Airbnb connects guests and hosts. As bandwidth capacity grows around the globe, we find ourselves in a world where people can share bandwidth both beneficially and imperceptibly. We see glimpses of that already today: Amazon shares bandwidth with Amazon Sidewalk, Microsoft shares bandwidth with Windows updates, etc. We build Arc for this world -- a post-adblock world -- to give sites a better, more ethical way to support themselves that doesn't bombard users with ads, suck up their personal data, and preserves their privacy. A few notes: - For sites that use Arc's CDN, users do not use upload bandwidth and Arc's widget isn't displayed. It's just a faster, 10x cheaper CDN in one <script> tag. That's it. (See https://arc.io/faq#do-users-upload-content-with-just-the-cdn https://arc.io/faq#do-users-upload-content-with-just-the-cdn) - For sites that monetize with Arc, we mandate that Arc's widget remains visible and intractable in the lower left corner of your website so users can learn about Arc and, if they so desire, opt out. (See https://arc.io/faq#can-i-move-modify-or-hide-arcs-widget https://arc.io/faq#can-i-move-modify-or-hide-arcs-widget) Additionally, Arc never activates on cellular connections; Wi-Fi and ethernet only. - If you elect to opt out (two clicks in Arc's widget), you're opted out of all sites with Arc. Please email me if you'd like an invite code to take Arc's CDN for a spin: ansgar@arc.io. It's 10x cheaper than Fastly, AWS, Google, etc. (See http://arc.io/cdn/ http://arc.io/cdn/). And I'd love to hear your thoughts! Feedback is how good products become great.

catlifeonmars 5y ago
I’m curious what your analysis of the equilibrium states of this model look like. I think it’s an interesting approach, but I’m not entirely convinced it’s sustainable. Edit: TL;DR; show me the math! :D
easrng 5y ago
How does Arc make P2P connections from a Service Worker? IIRC WebRTC isn't available.

zimbatm 5y ago

How stable is the CDN when the each node lifetime is 5 minutes? The likelihood of an ongoing request being cut off is fairly high. Nodes are also constantly in syncing state I assume.

grun 5y ago
Very! The lifetime of nodes is actually quite a bit longer than 5 minutes as the tab doesn't need to be foregrounded (which Google Analytics and others report as the end of the 'session'). That, and when a node comes online, it joins the network with the cache contents it had filled previously. So it joins the network warm, not cold and needing to be filled.
- zimbatm 5y ago
  Interesting. Is the cache shared between all the websites that install this product? What happens to a HTTP request to a browser whenever they close their tab, is it retried on another browser?

jeroenhd 5y ago

> only runs when a device is connected to Wi-Fi or Ethernet. Cellular bandwidth is never used. That's interesting. How does the website possibly detect that I'm on a cellular network when I'm a) use Firefox (which doesn't implement the NetworkInformation API) and b) use a VPN to either a data center or my home server? What about iOS devices using Apple's pseudo-Tor (because Safari doesn't expose NetworkInformation either), or devices using tethered WiFi? I don't believe this claim at all. This makes me take all their other claims they make with a massive grain of salt as well. There's also the massive privacy issue: other people will know what websites you visit by simply using the P2P system, and the entire thing seems to be opt-in unless you use an adblocker. That last part shows that the devs know of the privacy issue but have decided to take the practical approach of not fixing the issue and only doing the bare minimum to remove their website from blocklists. It's only a matter of time before someone will make a tool that enumerates all IPs in the Arc network together with the content they've been served. This one is going onto my Pihole's blocklist...

grun 5y ago
Great questions! > How does the website possibly detect that I'm on a cellular network when I'm a) use Firefox (which doesn't implement the NetworkInformation API) and b) use a VPN to either a data center or my home server? Yep. An IP lookup is also done to see which AS the user is on. Eg an AWS IP vs a T-Mobile IP. We also do this to detect when people tether, as when tethering Chrome will report a Wi-Fi connection via the NetworkInforamtion API but it's Wi-Fi on top of an underlying cellular connection. > There's also the massive privacy issue: other people will know what websites you visit by simply using the P2P system All cached data is both fragmented and encrypted. When a node sends data to another peer, it's an encrypted fragment of a file and the sender doesn't know 1) what data it's sending nor 2) which website that data is being sent for.

a_paddy 5y ago

Under EU Directive 2009/136/EC a user's permission is required before Arc can store any data in their browser. Is Arc obtaining that permission, or just looking for forgiveness by allowing users to Opt-Out?

MrStonedOne 5y ago
Gonna have to specify a section/article of the directive you are referring to to get an answer from op/the creators. They aren't gonna read a thousand page directive to answer a question about legalities on a hacker news forum.
a_paddy 5y ago
a.k.a. The EU Cookie Law (doesn't just apply to Cookies) End users must be asked to Opt-In, if they reject then it's ok to deny them access to the page, just like if they reject Ads.

caseyross 5y ago

My first reaction was "yikes, that's super unethical to use users' bandwidth, storage, and processing power without their knowledge". But after thinking about it a lot, I have to say I've come around. As users, we all pay for upload bandwidth, and 99% of the time it's sitting there idly and providing literally no value to us or anyone else. That's because gosh darn it, we paid for it, so there's no way we're gonna let anyone else us it! But, if we stop thinking in binary terms of "my property" or "your property", and open our minds for a minute, what's so bad, really, about each of us donating a few resources to make the shared Internet run faster for everyone? If everyone does the same, we're all better off, and no one is worse off since the bandwidth was just going to waste anyway. Furthermore, the storage needed is already in use, storing the exact same content, just for your own exclusive use instead of everyone's, and the additional CPU cycles needed are surely much fewer than it takes to run the worthless ads your browser downloads everyday. I think of it as sort of the same logic as vaccination, where we ask people to pay a small private cost in a way that produces outsized benefits for society as a whole. In particular, each person gets an individual benefit much larger than the cost of the private resources they paid. Now, if the private resources aren't practically free like bandwidth or ROM, but actually expensive like capped data or mobile phone battery life, the ethical logic starts to get a bit murkier. However, I think it's definitely possible to build an effective peer-to-peer CDN without needing to touch those kind of scarce resources. The other reservation I have about this sort of project is that you really need to be able to trust the people running it to not abuse their control of the network (which really just means: other peoples' computers). That's, in my view, a much thornier issue than anything relating to the consumer end of the network. Let's hope the team will be able to successfully tackle both the technical and the human problems of a P2P CDN, and help push the Internet towards a more communal, sharing paradigm. Best of luck to them.

true_religion 5y ago

I wish I knew how this sort of CDN was created, so I could sponsor one explicitly for NSFW sites. It’s a large an existent market, but always one that’s ignored because of the complexities of dealing with it. However if you are already an insider, initial moderation isn’t so hard.

fomine3 5y ago

> Add Arc to your existing CDN(s) and your performance will only improve and you'll only save money. Seriously?