5 ms·

What happened to peer-to-peer as a technological concept? Actually, we still use a lot of that technology.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
superkuh 4y ago
Smartphones took over as people's primary "computers" of choice. And mobile devices, generally, don't even get an IPv4 address with ports as most are behind carrier NAT. So most people cannot participate on the internet anymore and require third parties to hold their metaphorical hand when doing network operations. For people still using actual computers with real internet connections and ports p2p is still as big, and as useful, as ever. It's just that the relative percentage of online users with actual internet connections has shrunk. The absolute number of people with real computers and connections has not shrunk.
- littlestymaar 4y ago
  Being behind a NAT poses constraints for p2p technologies (you need some well-known servers to do the hole-punching and act as a relay, but that's not too different from the well-know IPs that are needed for bootstraping a regular p2p system anyway, except of course, not every NAT are friendly to hole punching, and that's a problem as well…) but that also has a significant security and privacy advantage: since you aren't openly connected to the internet, you don't casually leak your computer's IP to the random strangers you're interacting with (at least when we're talking about a NAT you share with other people, not just your ISP box's NAT) and the amount of harm they can actually do to you is significantly lower. In the end I think the internet would actually be a significantly better place security-wise for p2p if IPs weren't directly routable by default, and NAT with all its limitations gives you mostly that.
  - dinosaurdynasty 4y ago
    NAT punching definitely tells other peers your NAT's IP address (and often your local address too, but that's less important). Unless you're behind CGNAT, your NAT IP can often be used to find your neighborhood with public information. With private information (a legal challenge for example) you can find the exact subscriber/house.
    - littlestymaar 4y ago
      > NAT punching definitely tells other peers your NAT's IP address Yes, and that's all you share, so when the NAT is shared with other people (like other students on a campus for instance, or other customers of your phone mobile phone carrier) the amount of info that can be collected is much lower than if you have a public IP address for your computer. > Unless you're behind CGNAT Did you read what I wrote above, when I said: “at least when we're talking about a NAT you share with other people, not just your ISP box's NAT”. > (and often your local address too, but that's less important). Here you're mixing up the hole-punching part with the signaling protocol (ICE, which have had this issue in the past, before browsers switched to mDNS[1] instead of private IP addresses in ICE candidates). [1]: https://groups.google.com/g/discuss-webrtc/c/6stQXi72BEU?pli=1 https://groups.google.com/g/discuss-webrtc/c/6stQXi72BEU?pli...
      - dinosaurdynasty 4y ago
        You need a signaling protocol to do hole punching.
        littlestymaar 4y ago
        The two are working together to establish a p2p connection behind a NAT but that doesn't make them equivalent. It's like saying “UDP sometimes leaks your local IP address”, that's factually inaccurate.
- ztetranz 4y ago
  Here's an off-topic but somewhat related question that I've been meaning to ask somewhere. How do "plug and play" consumer devices that receive an incoming call / connection work behind the typical home NAT router? I have an OOMA VOIP phone service which is plugged into my home router with no ports forwarded. It has no trouble receiving an incoming call. Does it simply open an outgoing connection and hold it open indefinitely?
  - aliqot 4y ago
    STUN or an intermediary
  - wmf 4y ago
    Yes, that's pretty much the only way it could work.
dottedmag 4y ago
It became... boring technology.
- throwaway14356 4y ago
  haha, so many tb's now for such small money
sliken 4y ago
Years ago, most computing devices were desktops. They often had a routable IP address, unlimited power, and would happily sit passing packets all day. This made things like a DHT practical, so you could find your other peers. This made things like the early days of skype where except for auth, chat and file sharing was p2p. After being online for long enough and having a routable IP, you could become a supernode to help less fortunate nodes talk to each other. These days a much larger fraction of computing devices are on battery, on expensive networks like cellular, and can't really tolerate being part of a DHT. Increasing use of NAT/Masquerading makes a harder (and a support nightmare) to accept incoming packets from new peers. One solution to this is to add a "superpeer" to a router distribution like OpenWRT, or sell the "plug/wallwart" to help. That way a cheap (under $100) computer could build reputation with it's peers, accept incoming packets form new peers, provide some storage, and keep up with DHT maintenance. Then low power and/or expensive network peers could just check their "home" superpeer and get what they need quickly with minimal bandwidth and power.
- pbronez 4y ago
  I agree that a pool of equal peers is tough these days. I think the Fediverse has a pretty good approach, where most end users are on mobile but you can spin up a server whenever. There’s still a big complexity/skill/cost jump from “I toot from my iPhone” to “I run a mastodon instance for my company” though. Some of that can be addressed by managed hosting. It’s probably preferable to have a “super peer” though. In my mind, a superpeer runs the same software as a peer, but does more work because it can. It should be easier to maintain than a full server. I’m taking about the difference between: A) manage a mastodon node, with its own redis, PostgreSQL, web server, object storage, etc And B) run BitTorrent in the background on your gaming PC to seed the latest cut of the niche documentary you’re working on There’s a lot of interesting self-hosting projects happening, but they tend to focus on helping you run kubernetes or a similar container orchestrator. That’s still way more complex than an executable. I think we need things to get a bit more opinionated again…
  - sliken 4y ago
    Agreed. Supernodes should be near zero admin, and be able to run where advantageous, not just where an expert is available. OwnCloud/Nextcloud running every more services and at least looking at fediverse integration. Various NASs allow local applications for photos, plex, etc. All targeted at being nearly turnkey and friendly to the average consumer. Ideally things become easy enough that people can depend less on FAANG and do more with services that are distributed. Hopefully the software can get to the point where your server helps when it can, but if it's down other servers would help out. I just bought a $120 ($140 with case) router, 8 cores, 8GB ram, 32GB storage, GigE + 2x2.5gbe. I've love to dedicate it for messaging, filesharing, mastodon, photo storage/viewing/sharing, etc and even have it exchange services with others so that message/photos/whatever can be shared even if it goes down. Hopefully it gets there, pretty amazing resources are available cheap these days. I'd happily trade 2/3rd of my resources for other peers ... if they did the same for me.
matheusmoreira 4y ago
NAT happened. Everyone is behind a NAT these days. No way to directly network with any computer on the internet anymore.
lisbon44 4y ago
For 'Linux ISOs' some of the decline was bandwidth getting cheaper for mirror hosts, meaning that in place of P2P seeders there are now well-connected mirrors that are not 'bandwidth handicapped' in comparison to the past

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Smartphones took over as people's primary "computers" of choice. And mobile devices, generally, don't even get an IPv4 address with ports as most are behind carrier NAT. So most people cannot participate on the internet anymore and require third parties to hold their metaphorical hand when doing network operations. For people still using actual computers with real internet connections and ports p2p is still as big, and as useful, as ever. It's just that the relative percentage of online users with actual internet connections has shrunk. The absolute number of people with real computers and connections has not shrunk.

littlestymaar 4y ago
Being behind a NAT poses constraints for p2p technologies (you need some well-known servers to do the hole-punching and act as a relay, but that's not too different from the well-know IPs that are needed for bootstraping a regular p2p system anyway, except of course, not every NAT are friendly to hole punching, and that's a problem as well…) but that also has a significant security and privacy advantage: since you aren't openly connected to the internet, you don't casually leak your computer's IP to the random strangers you're interacting with (at least when we're talking about a NAT you share with other people, not just your ISP box's NAT) and the amount of harm they can actually do to you is significantly lower. In the end I think the internet would actually be a significantly better place security-wise for p2p if IPs weren't directly routable by default, and NAT with all its limitations gives you mostly that.
- dinosaurdynasty 4y ago
  NAT punching definitely tells other peers your NAT's IP address (and often your local address too, but that's less important). Unless you're behind CGNAT, your NAT IP can often be used to find your neighborhood with public information. With private information (a legal challenge for example) you can find the exact subscriber/house.
  - littlestymaar 4y ago
    > NAT punching definitely tells other peers your NAT's IP address Yes, and that's all you share, so when the NAT is shared with other people (like other students on a campus for instance, or other customers of your phone mobile phone carrier) the amount of info that can be collected is much lower than if you have a public IP address for your computer. > Unless you're behind CGNAT Did you read what I wrote above, when I said: “at least when we're talking about a NAT you share with other people, not just your ISP box's NAT”. > (and often your local address too, but that's less important). Here you're mixing up the hole-punching part with the signaling protocol (ICE, which have had this issue in the past, before browsers switched to mDNS[1] instead of private IP addresses in ICE candidates). [1]: https://groups.google.com/g/discuss-webrtc/c/6stQXi72BEU?pli=1 https://groups.google.com/g/discuss-webrtc/c/6stQXi72BEU?pli...
    - dinosaurdynasty 4y ago
      You need a signaling protocol to do hole punching.
      - littlestymaar 4y ago
        The two are working together to establish a p2p connection behind a NAT but that doesn't make them equivalent. It's like saying “UDP sometimes leaks your local IP address”, that's factually inaccurate.
ztetranz 4y ago
Here's an off-topic but somewhat related question that I've been meaning to ask somewhere. How do "plug and play" consumer devices that receive an incoming call / connection work behind the typical home NAT router? I have an OOMA VOIP phone service which is plugged into my home router with no ports forwarded. It has no trouble receiving an incoming call. Does it simply open an outgoing connection and hold it open indefinitely?
- aliqot 4y ago
  STUN or an intermediary
- wmf 4y ago
  Yes, that's pretty much the only way it could work.

dottedmag 4y ago

It became... boring technology.

throwaway14356 4y ago
haha, so many tb's now for such small money

sliken 4y ago

Years ago, most computing devices were desktops. They often had a routable IP address, unlimited power, and would happily sit passing packets all day. This made things like a DHT practical, so you could find your other peers. This made things like the early days of skype where except for auth, chat and file sharing was p2p. After being online for long enough and having a routable IP, you could become a supernode to help less fortunate nodes talk to each other. These days a much larger fraction of computing devices are on battery, on expensive networks like cellular, and can't really tolerate being part of a DHT. Increasing use of NAT/Masquerading makes a harder (and a support nightmare) to accept incoming packets from new peers. One solution to this is to add a "superpeer" to a router distribution like OpenWRT, or sell the "plug/wallwart" to help. That way a cheap (under $100) computer could build reputation with it's peers, accept incoming packets form new peers, provide some storage, and keep up with DHT maintenance. Then low power and/or expensive network peers could just check their "home" superpeer and get what they need quickly with minimal bandwidth and power.

pbronez 4y ago
I agree that a pool of equal peers is tough these days. I think the Fediverse has a pretty good approach, where most end users are on mobile but you can spin up a server whenever. There’s still a big complexity/skill/cost jump from “I toot from my iPhone” to “I run a mastodon instance for my company” though. Some of that can be addressed by managed hosting. It’s probably preferable to have a “super peer” though. In my mind, a superpeer runs the same software as a peer, but does more work because it can. It should be easier to maintain than a full server. I’m taking about the difference between: A) manage a mastodon node, with its own redis, PostgreSQL, web server, object storage, etc And B) run BitTorrent in the background on your gaming PC to seed the latest cut of the niche documentary you’re working on There’s a lot of interesting self-hosting projects happening, but they tend to focus on helping you run kubernetes or a similar container orchestrator. That’s still way more complex than an executable. I think we need things to get a bit more opinionated again…
- sliken 4y ago
  Agreed. Supernodes should be near zero admin, and be able to run where advantageous, not just where an expert is available. OwnCloud/Nextcloud running every more services and at least looking at fediverse integration. Various NASs allow local applications for photos, plex, etc. All targeted at being nearly turnkey and friendly to the average consumer. Ideally things become easy enough that people can depend less on FAANG and do more with services that are distributed. Hopefully the software can get to the point where your server helps when it can, but if it's down other servers would help out. I just bought a $120 ($140 with case) router, 8 cores, 8GB ram, 32GB storage, GigE + 2x2.5gbe. I've love to dedicate it for messaging, filesharing, mastodon, photo storage/viewing/sharing, etc and even have it exchange services with others so that message/photos/whatever can be shared even if it goes down. Hopefully it gets there, pretty amazing resources are available cheap these days. I'd happily trade 2/3rd of my resources for other peers ... if they did the same for me.

matheusmoreira 4y ago

NAT happened. Everyone is behind a NAT these days. No way to directly network with any computer on the internet anymore.

lisbon44 4y ago

For 'Linux ISOs' some of the decline was bandwidth getting cheaper for mirror hosts, meaning that in place of P2P seeders there are now well-connected mirrors that are not 'bandwidth handicapped' in comparison to the past