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."

Comments

The web is dead.

[Anonymous Coward]

Best that you just accept it and move on.

Wait. WTF? The web is dying???

Andre whatever is dumb

[Anonymous Coward]

his dumbass is mixing up layer 2 and layer 7

news for nerds my ass, more like stories from idiot millienials

Inversion

[alternative_right]

The promise of the internet: decentralized information.

The reality: 90% of the traffic goes to FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) monopolists.

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.

No dinner for Andre.

[fahrbot-bot]

He warns that Facebook, Google, and Amazon plan to "grow beyond browsers ..." ... and predicts the next wave of walled gardens will be a "social internet" bypassing the web altogether.

You know that the Web is more than just social media and online shopping sites - right?

He wants to build a mobile mesh web that works with or without internet access ... He cites mega-projects "to rescue the web from the internet", which include progress on peer-to-peer and mesh networking protocols,

So... using other networks, but not "the internet"? You know that "the internet" is a network of networks, perhaps even different kinds of networks - right?

Re:No dinner for Andre.

[TheRaven64]

Network neutrality was the key differentiator between the early ISP and the incumbent OSPs. Services like AOL and CompuServe gave you access to a network and controlled what you could access, how much it cost, and so on. ISPs, in contrast, gave you unprejudiced access to a network that was not within their control. There was no need for network neutrality regulation because network neutrality was the key differentiator for ISPs. Then the OSPs died and the ISPs started wondering whether they could become more OSP-like and more profitable as a result. Network neutrality regulation only began in response to a relatively recent movement by ISPs away from a neutral network being the default stance.

OSI 7-layer model

[JimToo]

Old, basic and obviously forgotten.

Hold on a second

[grasshoppa]

Can we go back to where it states that the web is dying, I was too busy laughing and lost track of the rest of the post.

This idiot is their own stated problem.

[slack_justyb]

From the piece of drivel written

In other words, the internet economy simply isn’t ready for a scenario where IPv6 is used everywhere and NAT is abandoned. We are stuck with what we have.

That is exactly the crap I hear that stops IPv6 migration. This person literally is the reason why they are lamenting IPv6's slow adoption. But that said, so we have this technical argument for why the "web" is dying, even though it's an Internet argument. But let's backtrack to this little gem.

The advent of NAT routers also allowed for that intermediate computer to become a guardian and protect other computers from some dangers of the open internet.

If that's what you are doing, you are doing it mostly wrong. That's not a function of NAT, that's a flipping function of *routing*. You can literally have all kinds of globally addressable IP addresses on systems, connect them, and then have 100% of them respond to 0% of the incoming requests. You literally do not need NAT for that and if that's the sole reason you are using NAT (to be more secure), you more than likely shouldn't have your job. That's not saying NAT doesn't have a place or anything, but that is me saying that if your rationale is solely for security, you will find lots of folks that will tell you otherwise. Again, NAT has a place, time, and use, but this person writing the piece is missing every single point of that. Now I know everyone is going to foam or spout with their opinion on NAT, but you have to snap out of it because, remember these are "Internet" issues not "web" issues and as you keep reading, if you aren't keeping that point in your head, you'll just get sucked into this argument of "NAT is awesome v. F*** NAT!" So I digress, let's actually continue.

It also meant that some computers were first-class citizens on the internet, while other computers were subordinates. In addition, the scarcity of IP addresses caused them to be considered valuable assets, and so it became a business opportunity. IP addresses are being sold so that some computers can become first-class citizens on the internet.

I had no actual problem with this point until that last part I highlighted. That's when my brain snapped out of it and was like, "Wait, this has absolutely nothing to do with why Facebook, Google, et al are these massive black holes." This person is literally making this overly complicated, but weak attempt to dumb down an argument about the web, on technical merits that have nothing to do with what reasonable people would call "the web". And that point became even more clear here.

As a consequence, the internet has allowed intermediate computers to rule. These are like parasites that have grown too large to remove without killing the host. The technical flaw that favored intermediate computers prefigured a world where middlemen business models thrive. Google and Facebook connect consumers with advertisement publishers and charge fees for each ad.

Oh Mother of Stars that's eight hundred times pi radians of all kinds of wrong!! IPv4's short comings have **NOTHING** to do with why the big boys on the Internet are who they are. It is at this point your brain should be saying, "This person has about as much clue as to what they are saying as a canine on the ISS has of managing the station." I assure you it does not get better as it goes.

Novel peer-to-peer protocols such as IPFS and Dat help replace HTTP and make the web a content-centered cyberspace. This way the link to an image can be something like QaPdNnDWRLF1b — a so-called hash of the image, summarizing it — instead of mywebsite.com/pic.jpeg so that even if mywebsite.com servers are removed,

Re: doesn't require Internet access

[Wootery]

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.)