HTTP, or HyperText Transfer System, is the peer-to-peer communication protocol that now governs the internet. It is how you access the internet, view movies, and download files. It does, however, have numerous flaws, the most of which stem from the current paradigm’s centralized structure.
What exactly is the problem with today’s Internet?
Today, when you visit a website, your browser (client) connects to the servers (host) that “serve” that page, even if they are hundreds of miles away. This is referred to as location-based addressing, and it works by showing your location via the use of IP addresses. This process uses a lot of bandwidth, which costs us money and time. Furthermore, HTTP only downloads a single file from a single server at a time, which is much less efficient than downloading several parts of the same file from various computers. It also allows powerful countries, such as Turkey, to limit access to certain regions, as it did with Wikipedia servers in 2017.
IPFS can assist with these problems. It is a peer-to-peer and distributed file system that, by replacing HTTP, has the potential to re-decentralize the Internet. Censorship will be almost impossible on the internet, and published material will not disappear at the whims of a service provider or hosting network.
DDoS assaults, for example, would be unsuccessful since they need an attack on a central distribution mechanism, which IPFS lacks. Speed is another factor that is rising. Rather of sending requests to a single, centralized site, each node on a distributed web sends them to the node closest to him.
What mechanism is in play?
IPFS works by tying all networked devices together into a single file structure. Merkle DAGs are file formats that combine Merkle trees (which are used to ensure immutability in blockchain technology) with Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs) (used in Git version control, which also allows users to see the versions of content on IPFS). Think of it as a huge BitTorrent swarm.
Assume you’d like to read the IPFS whitepaper. In most instances, you’d give a URL that can be resolved to an IP address and has information about the file’s location (IPFS servers, if they exist), and then let your client connect to the host and download the file.
Consider using the IPFS network to connect to it. The file and all of its blocks are identified by a unique cryptographic hash of the content itself. The whole system is supported by a key-value data store. This is what allows content addressing: the key may be hosted by anybody, regardless of the material’s origin. As a consequence, you’d join the swarm and request a network file. It may be best to begin with your closest coworkers, since they are likely to have a copy of the file. If they don’t, you’ll connect to the node that uploaded the file first, since he is the one who hosts it. After that, you download the file and register as a host. That is, you are simultaneously the host and the client. It also indicates that you only host events that you are interested in.
Putting it all together
We’ve come a long way with IPFS, but we’re still not there. Regardless matter how simple it is to use, the typical user should be ignorant of any changes; this is the only way for the internet to switch protocols. This whole infrastructure is essential, particularly in the context of Blockchain technology. Blockchain training is quickly becoming the next hot thing in town, with every sector embracing it. Taking blockchain developer training can undoubtedly launch you into a more promising profession.