Good, now if only we could have bitorrent baked in...
EDIT: I mean baked in in the browser like tor, not baked in tor. Although interesting, it's really not my priority.
EDIT: I mean baked in in the browser like tor, not baked in tor. Although interesting, it's really not my priority.
The issue is not technical. It's just a chicken and egg problem. Most won't use bittorent unless it's stupidely easy to do. Remember that the average user don't know what an URL is and doesn't open new tabs willingly. Since they are the majority, they drive cost and benefits, so we must include them.
It does not have access to TCP or UDP sockets.
You couldn't, until Firefox 59. Before that, protocol handlers were not allowed to handle links to Dat/IPFS resources [0].
And while I agree with your comment regarding the chicken and egg problem, there are still some technical issues. As the shadowbanned sibling comment says, extensions don't have access to UDP/TCP sockets, meaning that you will need to run a gateway on your machine. See e.g. what dat-fox [1] does.
[0]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/ma...
You could, kind of, before Firefox 57 (or at least, at some point). Implementing nsIProtocolHandler/nsIChannel/etc. correctly was difficult (and probably not from JavaScript), and distribution problems meant nobody did it.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/overbiteff/
But, not possible anymore (without tricks).
[1] https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/background_pages
[2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/An...
Apart from the existing ecosystem of content, are their any reasons you want BitTorrent over ipfs?
Everyone on tor AND ipfs... Now that would be something.
I think IFPS needs a little more field testing before being set in stone. Indeed, if you bake in something in the browsers, then those implementation will be the boundary of what is practical to do. So any innovation will then be constraint by the browsers release and good will.
IFPS is a young tech, it needs time to evolve yet.
Tor and bittorrent are now quite mature.
It used WebRTC which is also encrypted. So gets you some privacy.
It's nice, but not nearly good enough.
Could you share your concerns about IPFS in its current state or what you see as its limitations? Thanks.
Facebook used to deploy their code using bittorent. I doubt it has changed.
A lot of blizzard video games update using bittorent as well. If you play Starcraft 2, you use bittorent.
Streaming services like stremio are basically bittorent. After netflix, it's my main source of video content.
If you want to download the internet archive, that's the saner option. Same if you are a pentester, as a lot of heavy leak or hash db are so huge only bittorent makes it practical. Too expensive to host for one small actor. It's also more resistant to take down notice.
We talked a lot about RSS lately, and how to revive it, while in comments people said it actually never died. Bittorrent is a lot like that. Great tech, great standard, it works flawlessly and fill its use case perfectly.
The only reason it's not more adopted is because it's not in the browser by default. Otherwise the hosting benefit and the dl speed is such that it would be an instant hit.
I'll be happy to give more details on ngdp if you are curious.
https://gist.github.com/jleclanche/91f2f5c0f2042a81db1c61464...
They basically created their own git protocol + virtual filesystem, optimized for asset patches inside large compressed binary files. I wish they'd open source it.
Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13140257
However it is usually through VPN, not Tor.
(And before you say anything, I do pay for Netflix and have video included in my Amazon Prime membership - none of which had those movies)