Peer-to-peer overlay networks are a bad idea on a DSL-based internet.

http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2011-August/000935.html

by laughinghan • 15 years ago

56 35 15 years ago

lists.canonical.org

tptacek• 15 years ago

This is a sensible post but note that there are interesting and important applications for overlay networks that are not "peer to peer" (ie, that do not use last-mile bandwidth for transit).

sqrt17• 15 years ago

The alternative to using last-mile transit is for everyone to have a virtual server somewhere. Even this seems to be a bit off since 90% of all people only ever consume content and can't be bothered with anything like creating their own content.

DanWaterworth9• 15 years ago

Even if just a small minority of people had VPSs that were on some P2P network it would be better than the current system of monopolies.

kragen9• 15 years ago

I think that's a good idea. It might not even have to be virtual, given servers the size of the Raspberry Pi: http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/raspberry-pi-25-pc-goes-i...

illume• 15 years ago

Most people create content. See facebook, and email as proof if you are skeptical.

wmf• 15 years ago

I like the term server-to-server (S2S) from Jabber; basically P2P where the peers are located in datacenters.

kragen9• 15 years ago

Thanks.

schiptsov2• 15 years ago

Internet is already GSM-based which is much much worse.. ^_^

schiptsov2• 15 years ago

It is amazing to see that current HN's audience is unable to notice that consumers are switching from PC+ADSL scheme to laptop+HSDPA USB stick or some Android/Apple device and that global GSM carriers were already won the market with cheap data-only plans.

But it is OK that typical US citizen hardly knew that other countries exists. ^_^

btw, I'm currently in Sweden, where HSDPA coverage even in rural areas is a defacto standard. Same trends going on everywhere in the world (Asia and Europe), except, of course, US. ^_^

banderson623• 15 years ago

It would be a much better read without the attitudes declared through statements like "The horrifying existence of abominations like Hulu and the iTunes Music Store..."

I get the technical details, but the attitude is obnoxious at best and diluting the point at worst.

rmrm• 15 years ago

People seem to like Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, eBay, Youtube, etc.

They haven't stopped the internet from the 1990s from existing, its still there and available. Most people just seem to like this other corporate internet a lot more.

It seems to me that in many arguments, it isn't about whether it's possible for people to have their non-corporate, idealized internet (because it is), it's about not allowing others to also have the internet they want (Hulu, iTunes, Facebook, etc), because ultimately people aren't visiting the idealized, non corporate internet, and aren't going to -- because the majority of people prefer the other one.

Ultimately, it seems to be a disappointment rooted in the behaviors and wants of the majority, tho its rarely ever framed as such.

kragen9• 15 years ago

People don't always choose the things that make them happy, especially collectively. If we step back a bit from the internet, this point is obvious: the people of the US, for example, collectively chose to have the Civil War and then abolish slavery, when abolishing slavery without the war would have been a much better choice; and alcoholics who die of exposure in the street would probably have preferred, in retrospect, to never start drinking. Some of them will tell you that explicitly even before dying.

So it's not really disappointment. It's advocacy: there is a better way, a brighter future. And I have a selfish interest in telling people about it, because despite what you say, it's not a choice I can make entirely on my own.

> They haven't stopped the internet from the 1990s from existing; it's still there and available.

In the 1990s, I could email my mother from the mail server in my house; I could walk to the local bookstore and browse the books on the shelves; I could chat online with my friends without giving Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook minute-by-minute updates on when I'm at my computer; I could read and post to Usenet, which had useful discussions on it, without broadcasting my reading habits to whoever was wiretapping (because my ISP had a local news server); and I could run years-old software on my computer without becoming a victim of the latest worm.

So the two internets you're talking about do not exist independently of each other. They interact in a lot of ways. Sometimes the interference is constructive (internet access is available in a lot more places now, and bandwidth is cheaper), and sometimes it's destructive (Usenet is dead.)

I don't think the problem is really even the wants of the majority. I think the problem is that the majority of people are getting tricked into choosing things they don't want, both because they aren't aware of the implications of their choices and because there are prisoner's-dilemma games going on. (Recruit all your friends to Farmville and your farm will be bigger!)

kragen9• 15 years ago

Part of the reason for stating my values so clearly is that the primary audience for this post is people who share those values. I don't want people who share those values to misattribute my conclusions to a conflict of values.

As for people who don't think Hulu and the iTunes Music Store are horrifying abominations, they probably already think ADSL is fine and dandy, so there's no point in tailoring the article to them.

PaulHoule• 15 years ago

I've met so many people who've got this silly fantasy that there's something 'democratic' about hosting a web server at home. It's fine for a toy web site, but if you want your site to be fast and reliable, it's much more sensible to keep your server in a data center... in most cases, cheaper too.

kleiba• 15 years ago

My hobby: reposting links from inside other HN front page articles.

kragen9• 15 years ago

Not everything on kragen-tol started out as a comment on an HN article. Most of the linked post, for example, did not.

MaysonL• 15 years ago

Please somebody fix the title to read "an ADSL" instead of "a DSL".

kragen9• 15 years ago

The middle half or so of my post is devoted to explaining why SDSL is a bad idea, which I think justifies the more general title. I take it you disagree? Why?

DanWaterworth9• 15 years ago

A better title would have been, "Why it's a bad idea for P2P overlay networks to use last-mile bandwidth".

tuomasb• 15 years ago

I think the decision by Google to not buy Skype is great. Skype uses supernodes/decentralized address book and other trickery to keep the most of the load off their servers/NAT proxies. Whatever advantage Skype got from decentralization when it started in 2003 is now long gone. Bandwidth is ridiculously cheap and voice calls don't really take more than 16kbps with modern codecs.

If two Skype clients can't connect to each other directly due to NAT, they proxy the connection via supernode. Any Skype client with a public IP address can be a supernode, so they might use your bandwidth and computer to route calls.

Skype brand and userbase alone are not worth $8,5B. Their P2P decentralization technology is worth ~$0.

Peer-to-peer overlay networks are a bad idea on a DSL-based internet.

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