Problem
The staggering success of the internet has prompted scaling issues that have never been fully resolved, due to the inherent age of HTTP, even with all its revisions, it fails to take advantage of many of the research and new file transfer methods developed since its inception. IPFS aims to resolve these issues by introducing a new global file distribution system that is decentralized and requires no trust between its nodes.
Previous works
The most successful P2P applications in the past have been used for file, video and audio sharing, applications such as Napster, KaZaA and BitTorrent. However, since they are built upon the backbone of HTTP, they share its issues and weaknesses.
My approach
I will look at the strengths of IPFS and similar proposals that have come out, performing a qualitative comparison of each of the protocols to see which one is best suited to the evolving world we live in today. Finally, I will look at the future of content distribution, how HTTP has guided it in the past and how IPFS and similar proposals might guide it in the future.
Deliverables
Deliverable
Estimated Schedule
Logbook
Ongoing
Design of IPFS
October 7th - 21
Adoption of IPFS
October 21 - November 4th
Midterm presentation
November 7th
Analysis of IPFS
November 4th - November 18
Final presentation
TBD
Future of content distribution
November 18 - December 2nd
Project Report
TBD
Project Website
https://sites.google.com/view/larryxu-466project-ipfs
References
[1] Benet, Juan, “IPFS - Content Addressed, Versioned, P2P File System”
[2] Trautwein et al. “Design and Evaluation of IPFS: A Storage Layer for the Decentralized Web”