The Server Needs To Die To Save The Internet

[steve2470]

http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/23/maidsafe/

No one said this was a small problem with an easy fix. MaidSafe has actually been working on its new network since 2006, finally coming out of stealth earlier this year to begin detailing its grand plan. It’s now rolling out the first of three test networks, to test the underlying network without any apps on it as yet, ahead of a full beta launch in Q4. The initial test network comprises 180 nodes, located in Singapore, San Francisco, Amsterdam and New York.

So what exactly is this startup building? MaidSafe’s Nick Lambert summarizes the product as “a fully cross-platform, fully decentralized autonomous data and communications network”. What that means in practice is a network that does away with an intermediary layer of servers and datacenters — replacing that with peer-to-peer infrastructure. (No surprise then that MaidSafe counts Michael Jackson, the former COO of P2P pioneer Skype, as an advisor.)

Basically, the users of the network are also acting as the network infrastructure by donating a portion of their spare hard drive capacity – with built in incentives for them to do so in the form of a network specific cryptocurrency (called SafeCoin).
There are no other networks that combine being autonomous and serverless
—
So, in a similar way to Bitcoin mining being incentivized by the creation and distribution of new Bitcoins, users of the MaidSafe network will be compensated for the computing resource they contribute by earning SafeCoin. (Currently one SafeCoin is worth around 2 US cents but there was also a time when Bitcoin was worth as little — and MaidSafe obviously expects the value of SafeCoin to scale up as usage of the network scales.) It calls this resource donation process farming.

IT folks, please chime in.

[d_r]

1. fine for somethings

But not the general direction we are headed with phones, TVs, devices etc.

[MineralMan]

2. Not a chance of me using my hard drive to serve anything.

That's not going to happen.

[PoliticAverse]

3. The new FidoNet?... n/t

[MohRokTah]

4. For somethings, distributed compute models are functional.

For other things, you'll never get away from servers.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

5. My chime...

As the other commenter said, it depends on what you're doing.

If you want any sort of privacy/proprietariness at all, it's anathema. If I were a really security-minded business, there are things I wouldn't even run or store on my own machines connected to the net, much less allow out in 'the cloud'. There are other groups that have been doing the processing part of this on a volunteer basis for years. SETI and 'Folding at Home' come to mind, wherein volunteers download client programs that allow these organizations to use any and all of their unused computation time to crunch data to either try to find evidence of alien life (SETI) or to do drug design and disease research (F@H). They're not really doing the data storage part, but it's just as feasible.

So for some things, it's a great idea. But for control freaks, it's as much a nightmare as the move from buying software to 'renting it' through monthly or annual fees for 'cloud hosted' apps.

[jeff47]

6. Sweet! Now I get to steal everyone else's data!

If you put the data on my hard disk, I get unlimited access to it. Meaning, I can steal all the information in it.

Encrypt it? Well, that means my "server" can't read it, so you can't use my server to do anything with the data. Which means you'd have to download all the data from everywhere onto your system in order to do anything with the data. Meaning the performance is awful.

And even if you do encrypt it, I have unlimited access to it. Meaning it's only a matter of time before I break the encryption. And while that takes a very long time with a general purpose processor, it takes a lot less time with specialized hardware. And the price of doing that is plummeting.

IOW, this is a terrible idea.

[sir pball]

7. Sounds exactly like Freenet

Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant communication. It uses a decentralized distributed data store to keep and deliver information, and has a suite of free software for publishing and communicating on the Web without fear of censorship.
...
The network is designed to be highly survivable, with all internal processes completely anonymized and decentralized across the network. The system has no central servers and is not subject to the control of any one individual or organization, including the designers of Freenet. Information stored on Freenet is distributed around the network and stored on several different nodes. Encryption of data and relaying of requests makes it difficult to determine who inserted content into Freenet, who requested that content, or where the content was stored. This protects the anonymity of participants, and also makes it very difficult to censor specific content. Content is stored encrypted, making it difficult for even the operator of a node to determine what is stored on that node"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet

From what I've heard, it makes Tor look like a bunch of saints. You don't want to be trying to explain what that gig of encrypted data is, even if you honestly don't know.

[L0oniX]

8. Sounds like the IRC Undernet.org idea.