back to article Cloudflare invites folk to dabble in the 'distributed web' with InterPlanetary File System gateway

Cloudflare has decided the four-year-old InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) project looks strong enough to warrant a little love, and has launched a gateway to allow the IPFS-curious to try out the "distributed web" protocol. The hosting outfit said users can use IPFS both to find and host content (noting there are currently …

  1. Registered Register Registrant

    What's old is new

    Do you even Freenet?

    IPFS sites would be a step up from the static freesite, I should hope.

    Supposing Cloudflare returns TITSUP some day, might their IPFS network outlive them? I'll look over the documentation pointed to by the author a little later.

  2. mark l 2 Silver badge

    I could see how you could build a static website using this technology, with images and text are served from IPFS. But a large proportion of modern websites use some sort of database, which would surely require traditional hosting unless your database was read only. So if the database hosting goes down they your are back to the site not working, all be with some text and images still loading.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A free SSL certificate ?

    I can't believe they honestly think people will wet their pants over free SSL certificates.

    Searching for "free ssl certificate" on your favourite search engine seems to suggest even that market isn't a Let's Encrypt monopoly anymore.

  4. Arthur the cat Silver badge
    Boffin

    Hash collisions

    QmXnnyufdzAWL5CqZ2RnSNgPbvCc1ALT73s6epPrRnZ1Xy happens to be the hash of a .txt file containing the string 'I'm trying out IPFS

    Assuming the Riemann Hypothesis it's also the hash of a certain span of digits in π. Proof and identification of the correct span left as an exercise for the reader.

  5. muhfugen

    " users can host content themselves without big hosts as gatekeepers"

    With the Cloudflare gateway this will still happen as evidenced by what they did with The DailyStormer.

  6. doublelayer Silver badge

    So, this is... wait, what is it?

    As far as I can tell, this is a version of the internet where everyone has to hold a bunch of data that no one needs because what if it dies? It can be annoying to get a broken link because someone's host has gone down, but it might be even more annoying to have to store a bunch of garbage that was posted at one point but has no purpose anymore. For example, could I use this as free storage for my encrypted backups, just by splitting them up and uploading them? How does the IPFS network feel about keeping that around so I can retrieve it by smaller and easier to store hashes?

    Another problem is the hashes themselves. It's wonderful that they can make it impossible/somewhat difficult to replace data, but that is what normal hashes already do. I somehow need to get my hands on all the hashes I need, and it's not that hard to put in some documents that look like what I want, but contain sneaky tracking code and incorrect hashes to other files, then ensure I get the wrong one. The lack of a secure way to indicate locations means that the secure delivery once a hash is entered is a lot less valuable than it sounds.

    1. Spazturtle Silver badge

      Re: So, this is... wait, what is it?

      No nobody has to store any thing they don't want to, you can host sometime and if somebody else copies it and hosts it then other people can find their copy with the same hash.

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