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That's the one. Juan mentioned it in one of his talks, said that it would be possible for IPFS to sit on top of that and use it as the network layer.

I think there is a level where DNS -> IPNS ID is even then still better than DNS -> IP address. For DNS -> IPNS you could have a facility in there saying 'This DNS TXT record should not change, if it does something is wrong'. You could lock down the record for a period of time, such as the duration of the lease from the registrar.

Besides, the idea is that IPFS could happily support Namecoin[1], so there's the decentralized, secure, and human-meaningful DNS service. The only 'non-secure' aspect there is the unlikely event of a 51% attack.

[1] https://namecoin.info

1) 2) 3), yes, it is still possible to directly connect to specific peers through IPFS, see http://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/QmTkzDwWqPbnAh5YiV5VwcTLnGdwSNsN...

I think that it should be possible to build hybrid centralized/decentralized sites with IPFS, with static public content being fully decentralized and sensitive information going through direct tunnels. Of course, the more decentralized your system the better.

As far as the IP system, yes we are unfortunately still reliant on ICANN being sensible about IP allocations, but the DNS system can be fully deprecated. I do know that there is a project out there to redo the IP system in a decentralized fashion but I can't recall its name right now.

It would be quite difficult to blacklist every bootstrap node. The thing is, every single IPFS node represents a DHT bootstrap node. In a world where everyone is using IPFS you could just turn to the stranger next to you, ask for his IP address, and bootstrap off him. You only need one single node to prise your way into the DHT network, one is enough to build out the rest of the network from.

>In case of neocities, a central server is giving you a hash that the nodes would provide you the data for, but without a central management how does IPFS associate correct file to the correct hash?

Mathematics[1]. Your hash is based on the content of the file, therefore you can guarantee that the content is the same as what the original author published. Also, IPFS is not a blockchain, there is no 51% attack.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptographic_hash_function

You can still use IPFS for direct messaging though, see http://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/QmTkzDwWqPbnAh5YiV5VwcTLnGdwSNsN...

The difference being you're addressing to IPFS node IDs, rather than IP addresses. The advantage here is that your IP address could change (moving datacenters etc.), but your node ID never needs to change. Technically you could just use IPFS for routing to between clients and your standard PHP server, which would still be an improvement over the current approach and would guarantee a DNS whoopsie couldn't redirect your site to China, but you'll get better results (less bandwidth required, guaranteed uptime) by decentralizing as much as you can.

A neat system might be, when the reciprocation system gets more advanced, to allow for nodes to build up a reputation/trust with other nodes while they're at home sitting on charge/wifi. Then, they can 'cash in' these brownie points when they're out and about, to download stuff without reuploading anything at the time.

There are a number of ways this reputation could be represented, perhaps one possible approach might involve exchanging some unit of cryptocurrency (Filecoin?), or perhaps a web-of-trust style system where nodes publicly 'trust' other nodes based on how much use that node was to them. Personally, I think cryptocurrency is the way to go here, but there's lots of work out there on P2P incentivization strategies.

Of course, this could work in tandem with the standard barter system that bittorrent uses, IPFS is not locked into any one reciprocation algorithm and could happily use multiple different systems depending on the situation.

Yes, bitswap is the same basic idea as bittorrent.

Maelstrom was a massive disappointment in my opinion, you appear to be locked in to static websites with no mechanism to issue updates. The entire site is packaged up into a single torrent blob meaning there is no hope of sharing swarms between different sites. And as has been said, it's closed source and Windows only. Avoid.

>You'll need HTTP to run server code

It's better if your application is redesigned to be distributed on a fundamental level, but you can still send custom data through IPFS in a standard client/server relationship if you want to, see http://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/QmTkzDwWqPbnAh5YiV5VwcTLnGdwSNsN... for an example.

>I for one will not be hosting a node where arbitrary code can be run

This isn't a distributed computation platform like Ethereum, it's purely for transferring files, and the only files you host are those that you explicitly request. Also, IPFS is not a blockchain with a 51% to take over, it's an entirely different animal, the only way to redirect a site is with the correct associated public/private key (unless SHA-256 gets broken at some point in which case IPFS migrates to a different hashing algorithm).

See https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs.js

It's coming along, not fully functional yet but you can watch its progress (or contribute code :D ) at https://github.com/ipfs/node-ipfs