Ask HN: How does IPFS help the interplanetary Internet of the future? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How does IPFS help the interplanetary Internet of the future?

6 pointsDavidPiper3 comments

IPFS (Interplanetary File System) is marketed as a New Internet: an HTTP replacement.

Content hashing, deduplication, data resilience/permanence, and P2P content downloads/uploads are all excellent features, and IPNS is a layer on top that gives the system a more human interface.

However to me this feature set makes IPFS sounds like a supercharged CDN, rather than a new kind of Internet.

If we're going to set up a lunar base, or start a civilisation on Mars, is IPFS actually going to make connecting them to the Internet easier? (Assuming connecting the networks of the Moon, Mars and Earth is something we want to do.) Is it going to improve our/their experience of the Internet?

How well does IPFS actually solve (or help solve) the problems of connecting and maintaining an Internet distributed across huge amounts of open space?

Yes you are correct about the supercharged cdn part. I think it can help in a way that you don't need the server to be hosted in a nearby location as long as a peer/peers have the hashes you request. This however will only work for read only access.

You can imagine say a satellite (or multiple satellites) between Mars and moon is a peer that contains hashes to your website content. Rather than make the full trip to earth you can just get that hash from the satellite instead drastically decreasing load times.

IPFS is overrated, if we are going truly decentralised hosting for files then something like sia, or whatever blockchain crap that incentivises users to actually store the file, would be better longterm. An easy wrapper around BitTorrent would be of more value than IPFS.

Wouldn’t worry about interplanetary shit, it’s marketing bs.

> if we are going truly decentralised hosting for files then something like sia, or whatever blockchain crap that incentivises users to actually store the file, would be better longterm.

If I understand you, you're describing a problem that IPFS is not intending to solve.

OP is right, IPFS is (tasked with being a) largely a supercharged, local-first CDN. The thought is that the web as it is designed is not scalable, and seamless locality of the data is important.

Personally I agree with that, it's a bit silly that we download from non-local sources constantly. However long term storage as you cite is not something that IPFS aims to be. Nor is it a problem I think inherently needs solving.

In your view, why do we need a permanent internet? What is that solving, and who is hosting it?

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