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Can Mesh Networks Save a Dying Web? (thenextweb.com)
From an anonymous reader:
"The web is dying, but mesh networks could save it," writes open source hacker Andre Staltz. He warns that Facebook, Google, and Amazon plan to "grow beyond browsers, creating new virtual contexts where data is created and shared," and predicts the next wave of walled gardens will be a "social internet" bypassing the web altogether. "The Web may die like most other technologies do, simply by becoming less attractive than newer technologies."
He wants to build a mobile mesh web that works with or without internet access to reach the four billion people currently offline, adding that all the tools we need are already in our hands: smartphones, peer-to-peer protocols, and mesh networks. His vision? "Novel peer-to-peer protocols such as IPFS and Dat help replace HTTP and make the web a content-centered cyberspace... Browsers can be made to work like that, and although it's a small tweak to how the web works, it has massive effects on social structures in cyberspace... Now that we have experience with some of the intricacies of the social web, we can reinvent it to put people first without intermediate companies... We can actually beat the tech giants at this game by simply giving local and regional connectivity to people in developing countries. With mobile apps that are built mesh-first, the smartphones would make up self-organizing self-healing mobile ad-hoc networks... In internet-less regions, there is potential for scaling quickly, and through that, we can spawn a new industry around peer-to-peer wireless mesh networks."
He cites mega-projects "to rescue the web from the internet", which include progress on peer-to-peer and mesh networking protocols, followed by adoption on smartphones (and then a new wave of apps) -- plus a migration of existing web content to the new protocols, "to fix the overutilization of the wirenet and the underutilization of airnets, bringing balance to the wire-versus-air dichotomy, providing choice in how data should travel in each case...But it can only happen if the web takes a courageous step towards its next level."
He wants to build a mobile mesh web that works with or without internet access to reach the four billion people currently offline, adding that all the tools we need are already in our hands: smartphones, peer-to-peer protocols, and mesh networks. His vision? "Novel peer-to-peer protocols such as IPFS and Dat help replace HTTP and make the web a content-centered cyberspace... Browsers can be made to work like that, and although it's a small tweak to how the web works, it has massive effects on social structures in cyberspace... Now that we have experience with some of the intricacies of the social web, we can reinvent it to put people first without intermediate companies... We can actually beat the tech giants at this game by simply giving local and regional connectivity to people in developing countries. With mobile apps that are built mesh-first, the smartphones would make up self-organizing self-healing mobile ad-hoc networks... In internet-less regions, there is potential for scaling quickly, and through that, we can spawn a new industry around peer-to-peer wireless mesh networks."
He cites mega-projects "to rescue the web from the internet", which include progress on peer-to-peer and mesh networking protocols, followed by adoption on smartphones (and then a new wave of apps) -- plus a migration of existing web content to the new protocols, "to fix the overutilization of the wirenet and the underutilization of airnets, bringing balance to the wire-versus-air dichotomy, providing choice in how data should travel in each case...But it can only happen if the web takes a courageous step towards its next level."
In places like Cuba, where you don't have internet all over the place, then it works to have the packets routed through people cell phones or other devices to go out to all.
But don't confuse the base internet pipes with those companies that sit on top of it. The Base Internet is fine.
Old, basic and obviously forgotten.
The promise of the internet: decentralized information.
And it still is. The bigger problem is law, as a broad general topic, as it relates to the internet. The web used to be a wild frontier where anything goes. I've been working on it since the beginning, and more of that wild appeal is disappearing by the day. Monitoring by governments, likewise, is a concern.
The reality: 90% of the traffic goes to FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) monopolists.
So? Facebook, Google, and Apple don't really own anything. They aggregate content, and they're useful for that. Netflix drives video. They're only a major player because of the size of the files they move. Not because of the number of sessions they generate. Personally, I'm a lot more worried about corporations like Comcast, that hold their users essentially at gunpoint, while they make sure that there are no other options for access in the markets they work in.
The only solution: get away from a single source of access, and to one where we can route around the herd and its chosen megacorps.
The source of access is the isp. No two ways about it. Once online, people can choose to use facebook or netflix, or not. The ISP is non-negotiable. I honestly don't know if I want to live in a world where every app is OpenBizarre.
There are serious drawbacks to a horizontal decentralization of the server infrastructure which are persistent no matter how you do it. If a website or profile is unpopular, it may be more difficult to access. If the profile or website is only online when a user is, then you've got issues. You could try to solve it by providing hosting services against the network, but then you're doing the same thing you were doing before.
I don't think the web is going away anytime soon. Especially as app stores continue to lose traction. There's probably a better solution out there, but I don't think anyone's thought of it yet.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
Already has. You can download it now. http://www.servalproject.org/
Set aside some of the ridiculous hyperbole and optimistic technological claims of the article, and look just at the technologies it mentions. Some of them are pretty cool and could have their valued uses. I've praised IPFS many times on this site because it has the potential to distribute static content in a manner that is more affordable, reliable, and bandwidth-efficient than just putting it up on web servers. Throw in a bit of decentralised wireless, and your cellphone data use could plumet - rather than download all those big updates over the cell network, it'll just ask the phone of the person sitting next to you to send them via wlan, and only need to go to the cell network if it can't find a copy in range.
Just don't view distribution as a way to 'replace the internet.' It's a supplement. It can do certain things better.
Well, Google controls how most people find things on the web and a browser that controls how they see it.
But when it comes to search, there is no real vendor lock-in. Don't like Google's search? Think they are blocking relevant results? You can use DuckDuckGo, or Bing, or Yahoo. And you can change right now, as there is no search lock-in.
Amazon hosts a large percentage of web sites through AWS.
Citation needed. They are hardly the only hosting service out there; they aren't doing anything you can't replicate through some other provider, like Google, Microsoft, or any number of smaller regional players. If they don't want to host your site, you have options.
Facebook is the dominant social network where people communicate with each other.
The massive user bases of WeChat, WhatsApp, Line, iMessage, Skype, and Google Hangouts (never mind old-school SMS) would seem to show that users have a lot of options in the user-to-user communication space. While wildly popular, I'm having a hard time seeing what service Facebook provides that you can't get elsewhere should you choose.
Now that Net Neutrality is dead, ISPs now can control who goes over those pipes. The concern is real.
Net Neutrality is only dead in the United States. The world is a damn big place outside the US. I would agree there is a real concern that inside the US there are some real concerns that the tier 3 access providers may start picking winners and losers, but outside the US that's only the situation in countries with tight Internet control, such as China or North Korea.
Yaz
Yes, yes. There's a reason Ted Nelson's Xanadu idea never panned out.
Whenever someone points out that the web suffers link-rot, they demonstrate that they're not thinking clearly about robustness in large distributed systems.
You don't have the choice between link-rot and utopia. Your choice is between a single centralised point of failure, or many points of 'partial failure'. Thankfully, the web gives us the second option. We even have archive.org to take the edge off. Unfortunately, of course, we now have silos, which take us back to the first option.
That's one of the problems IPFS addresses by making links based on a content hash, not the current storage location.
Eh? So if I make a correction, the address of the resource changes? On the web, you have the choice. e.g. on Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System gives you the latest page, and https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=InterPlanetary_File_System&oldid=818883368 will always give you the snapshot from the 6th of January 2018. Similar schemes exist on GitHub and BitBucket.
(Disclaimer: I'm just being snarky and don't really know much about Xanadu, or distributed databases, or IPFS. I'd be glad to be corrected.)