IPFS, opposite to the conventional centralised data sharing modules, is a protocol that embraces decentralised, distributed, and peer-to-peer methods to store and share data.
IPFS is one of the right mixtures of communication protocols that achieved high throughput, low latency, and effective data distribution. It also has the advantage of being decentralised and highly secure. With the right implementation, IPFS can unfold a series of innovative keys to file sharing and communication. But how did it get there? What is the technological mixture that gave rise to IPFS? And what exactly are its benefits?
Here are the Crucial Technologies
Distributed Hash Tables
A distributed hash table is a decentralised and distributed arrangement that holds the index of ginormous amounts of data much similar to hash tables, a data structure that stores information as key/value pairs.
The data is distributed across the nodes (computers) connected to a network, and are effectively coordinated to facilitate efficient access and lookup between the nodes.
Nodes do not require a central managing authority to oversee the transfer of data, and the distribution ensures that no data is lost even when nodes fail or get disconnected from the network. DHTs can also be scaled to accommodate millions of nodes, which increases the backup of the data for every new node connected has a new copy of data.
Block Exchanges
BitTorrent is a popular file sharing system that successfully coordinates the transfer of data between millions of nodes (seeding in this place), but the exchange is limited to the torrent environment.
BitSwap is the IPFS’s generalised version of the protocol to avail a wider range of implementation. This is the basis for Filecoin, a p2p storage marketplace built on IPFS.
Merkle DAG
Merkle DAG is the result of merging Merkle Tree and Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG). Merkle trees are responsible for ensuring that the data blocks exchanged unaltered and undamaged. They are verified using cryptographic hash functions, a function that calculates a unique alphanumeric string (hash) corresponding the input.
Self-Certifying File System
Self-certifying File System, a distributed file system that doesn’t ask for special permissions to exchange the data. The data served to the client is authenticated with the file name which is marked by the server, and so the name ‘self-certifying’. It gives access to data with the transparency of the local storage.
IPFS uses the concept to create the Inter-Planetary Name Space (IPNS), an SFS that uses the public key encryption to self-certify objects published by the users of the network.
Each node of the network has a public key, private key, and a node ID which is arrived at by the hashing of the public key. And therefore, the nodes can sign the data object they publish with the private key, and its authenticity can be verified using the sender’s public key.
Pros and Cons
Pros
• Deduplication because everything is addressed by a hash.
• Integrity, files match the hash.
• Incentivized hosting via http://filecoin.io/
• Cheaper hosting.
• High performance.
• Archiving immutable data.
• Censorship resistant, except self-censorship.
• Content can be accessed offline or in low connectivity areas.
• Directory browsing.
• Multi-hash and Multiple transport support.
• IPFS is hash addressed and so it is immutable.
Cons
• If you own a monopoly, you are going to lose control it, because you’re not controlling the central host node.
• Currently, the low population of peers without Filecoin miners or mass user adoption.
• Currently, no good search engines/indexes/discovery http://ipfs-search.com/
• Currently, no good browsers https://beakerbrowser.com/
• IPFS lacks a strong economic model, and so it cannot provide a large scale database-as-a-service model by itself.
The Pros outweigh the Cons in terms of technological prowess, but as we can see, without substantiating the tech by reducing the potency on the cons, it is going to be a rough path to facilitate and bring out the best of the technology. Or you can ring us up to hire our Blockchain experts for your IPFS Blockchain gateway development.
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