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Yeah, with current consumption being "everyone wants a global DNS and global network access" it's semi-pointless. But that's just a chicken and egg problem. All

Yeah, with current consumption being "everyone wants a global DNS and global network access" it's semi-pointless. But that's just a chicken and egg problem. All of Wikipedia, libgen, thingiverse, open source packages, etc. can be locally cached somewhat trivially. Most oldschool games will run P2P fine over arbitrary networks. That's quite powerful indeed. Now we just need some localtalk apps (reinvent 'talk' and BBSs and get people off Failbook) and there will be users. Also, piracy can be normalized in a social way instead of the current situation so people can actually, you know, discuss and appreciate art. A killer app may be sharing your CCTV with people, so the community as a whole can more readily resist bad actors. Perhaps a starter node could be a bit of media to pick up wirelessly on your way to your commute, so you have a kind of protected local distribution that's censorship free and surveillance costs substantially more than with centralized networks. Next, bring back Fidonet! Haha. Maybe one too many red wines...

robertlagrant 2y ago
If only the users were better and didn't want to stream video, or talk on Facebook, or video call each other, I could run a brilliant service!
- rusk 2y ago
  It seems to me an approach would be to purposely deoptimize such a P2P network for these applications. Optimise for time-insensitive best effort delivery like the internet of old. Still plenty of applications can work to that model and it is “good enough” for doing business. Keep the bandwidth heavy applications on different channels with a different QoS guarantees and cost structure.
- lobocinza 2y ago
  Just need a decentralized system where people could be rewarded financially for providing network access. Imagine a plug and play system where people with a satellite link could sell network access to their neighbors without a headache. Clients would just need to specify how much they are willing to pay for GB and nodes how much they want to get paid in their routers. There are many great things that could be done but AFAIK nobody is investing in making that a reality because governments and those that benefiting from the established status quo would definitely get in the way. So Starlink is the way as there's not much that governments can do to get in the way of thousands of satellites controlled by company outside their territory.

robertlagrant 2y ago

If only the users were better and didn't want to stream video, or talk on Facebook, or video call each other, I could run a brilliant service!

rusk 2y ago
It seems to me an approach would be to purposely deoptimize such a P2P network for these applications. Optimise for time-insensitive best effort delivery like the internet of old. Still plenty of applications can work to that model and it is “good enough” for doing business. Keep the bandwidth heavy applications on different channels with a different QoS guarantees and cost structure.
lobocinza 2y ago
Just need a decentralized system where people could be rewarded financially for providing network access. Imagine a plug and play system where people with a satellite link could sell network access to their neighbors without a headache. Clients would just need to specify how much they are willing to pay for GB and nodes how much they want to get paid in their routers. There are many great things that could be done but AFAIK nobody is investing in making that a reality because governments and those that benefiting from the established status quo would definitely get in the way. So Starlink is the way as there's not much that governments can do to get in the way of thousands of satellites controlled by company outside their territory.