The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS)

From: RISHIKESH BHOLAH <rishikesh.bholah_at_umail.uom.ac.mu>
Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2017 17:01:29 +0400


Hello SM,

Recently Ish, Chittesh and I were discussing about Mozilla's goal of
decentralizing the internet. Yesterday, I found out about the
InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) [1] which is supposedly the best upgrade
for our long old HTTP. Despite of having no notion of the IPFS during our
conversation, the IPFS reflected closely to what we were thinking.

The IPFS is a distributed file system that seeks to connect all computing
devices with the same system of files. [2] The following article [3]
highlights the bottlenecks of HTTP as it being old, impermanent,
centralized and that content is IP addressed. Hence, the IPFS aims to
complement or even replace HTTP by making a permanent web where links are
content addressed and not IP addressed. Therefore reducing latency as the
content is grabbed from its nearest location.

IPFS uses a Distributed Hash Table (DHT) to store data, a MerkleDAG to give
it structure (inspired by the GIT protocol) and a bittorrent like data
exchange mechanism to maximize bandwidth. [4]

I would like to know what you (and others) think about this new protocol
and if one day the IPFS could replace HTTP.

Regards,
Rishikesh Bholah

[1] - https://ipfs.io/
[2] - https://medium.com/_at_ConsenSys/an-introduction-to-ipfs-9bba4860abd0
[3] -
https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/04/why-the-internet-needs-ipfs-before-its-too-late/
[4] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BA2rHlbB5i0

-- 
 <http://www.uom.ac.mu/prospectivestudents>
Received on Sun Oct 08 2017 - 13:01:47 PST

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