Re: [gopher] Question about using Gopher for P2P file transfer instead of HTTP
Hi,
Gopher is not decentralized. It is no different from http in this regard (beside having slightly less overhead and a nice native menuing system).
You won't be able to have anything faster and more reliable on a big scale than bittorent without heavy investing. A CDN is costly because it requires complex infrastructures, permanent monitoring staff and maintenance.
The only thing I see gopher could give you is to serve as a torrent hosting. ie you host torrent files on a small gopher server, organize them using gopher menus, and clients use your torrent meta files to start bittorrent downloads immediately, without having to worry about magnet initialization. Ideally, you'd need a public tracker, too (but you could just as well use some open trackers, there are several out there). Gopher would be nice here because it is good for small files (meta data), and would keep your stuff a bit "underground".
On the other hand, if you only need to provide a bunch of small files to the world, you might be just fine with a simple (and cheap) hosting, or host things yourself on a nanoPC in your basement (or attic, if it is not too hot there in the summer) :)
What kind of storage size are we talking about here? How many simulteanous clients? What kind of uplink bandwidth requirements?
Mateusz
Coyo <coyo@darkdna.net> wrote:
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>Well, I'm trying to find a better approach than bittorrent OR
>centralized file serving as part of a commercial cdn. i dont like
>being forced to choose either extreme.
>
>Since bittorrent magnet links can be very slow to initialize, and this
>delay can have a meaningful impact on installation time, i dont want
>to rely on bittorrent alone.
>
>since gopher is very lightweight and efficient, but more comprehensive
>than ftp or tftp, which i am trying to avoid, it sounded like a great
>alternative to many weaker embedded http servers.
>
>On 1/24/2014 12:31 PM, Kim Holviala wrote:
>> Well... libcurl already handles the client-side, and there are
>> several modern Gopher servers too (Wikipedia page has a nice
>> list).
>>
>> But... Maybe I'm dumb, but I really didn't get the point? How
>> exactly is a single resource-strained server faster than
>> bittorrent?
>
>I'm really glad you asked. I know little about how CDNs work
>internally, only that they are very expensive and I can't afford them.
>Akamai, Cloudflare, InterNAP and EdgeCast, the ones I looked at the
>most, and Level3 as well, though I already knew they would be
>exorbitant, all charge money I can't really afford, and it was not
>easy to get estimated prices, since they don't list prices on their
>websites, and you cannot get a quote without taking to a sales rep.
>
>I made the mistake of calling sales representatives before, and since
>I was not interested in buying hundreds of thousands of dollars of
>equipment and services RIGHT THEN, was not the representative of a
>multi-billion dollar organization, did not have my own AS number,
>which are a lot easier to get than I feared, but still not easy, a
>Network Operations Center, a fully authorized law firm and phone
>numbers with Glados-like private branch exchanges, etc, etc, etc. They
>were very rude at that point, and quickly got me off the phone.
>
>In other words, I don't even have the right to research what the price
>is likely to be, but through other resources I will not mention here,
>because they almost certainly violate non-disclosure agreements or
>other silly laws, I did get some estimates on what it would cost me,
>and they are astronomical. The prices may as well be measured in
>scientific notation.
>
>I can't afford that, I'm nowhere near being able to afford that, and I
>probably cant afford a CDN even if I was, in fact, a multi-billion
>dollar corporation. It's ridiculous.
>
>I'm trying to build a highly efficient CDN-alternative that does not
>rely on bitcoin alone, so one can serve thousands of small files
>individually while still retaining autonomy and decentralization.
>
>I know about Coral CDN, and it is NOT suitable for my purpose.
>
>And how exactly is having dozes of servers around the world cheaper
>than a CDN? Just slightly interested because I actually do those
>things for living...
>>
>>
>> - Kim
>
>If you do CDNs for a living, maybe you can tell me if I'm missing
>something. It could be that CDNs are very reasonably priced, but I'm
>not able to get a quote without a very rude sales rep hanging up on me.
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