
PeerCDN - A P2P CDN - blacktulip
https://peercdn.com/
======
andmarios
I hope any site that is going to use it, will ask its visitors for permission
first.

PeerCDN website completely avoids this matter, making them seem like fancy
squatters. Using the resources of a third party without its explicit consent,
is infringement afaik.

~~~
conductor
I think this kind of things (granting permissions) should be done by the
Browser, not the application. If some technology can be abused (like using the
microphone or the web-cam, and apparently, WebRTC) then the browser should ask
if this is OK, not the web-application.

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noptic
Look like a great but dangerous tool. Stealing users bandwidth and publishing
users IPs is a no go, but it could be really handy for online games and other
web applications with lots of assets. "To improve server performance game data
may be transfered from your browser to other players. Other players might see
your IP."

~~~
abi
Right now, it's not anonymous but we're working on adding anonymity by
relaying traffic through intermediate peers (like Tor).

Re: stealing bandwidth, I feel like web apps are being held to a ridiculous
standard compared to Desktop apps. If you download an app, does it explicitly
ask you for permission to use your upload bandwidth? I've never had any app to
do that. But, a lot of apps do use upload bandwidth. In fact, Spotify does P2P
to serve a LOT of its content. Check out the stats from Spotify:
[http://torrentfreak.com/spotify-a-massive-p2p-network-
blesse...](http://torrentfreak.com/spotify-a-massive-p2p-network-blessed-by-
record-labels-110617/)

Ultimately, I think it's better for the web if the traffic is more
decentralized because it renders sites hard to DDOS and censor. You can read
more about this aspect of peerCDN in our Mozilla Ignite App here:
[https://mozillaignite.org/apps/479/](https://mozillaignite.org/apps/479/)

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eksith
I don't mind sharing my bandwidth for this (I don't have mine capped
"literally speaking", but I'm sure there's some invisible limit), but I hope
it asks for permission first.

I didn't see anything about that in the FAQ (I'm still browsing). Or maybe
it's up to the sites where it's implemented? If so, that may be giving them
too much leeway.

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jkscm
They say the traffic is encrypted but how anonymous are its user? Will I be
announcing to every peer that I just visited a porn site?

~~~
abi
(I work on peerCDN). Thanks for the question. Right now, it's not anonymous
but we're working on adding anonymity by relaying traffic through intermediate
peers (like Tor).

~~~
jkscm
So you're making it slow again? Sorry for sarcasm and thanks for the honest
answer . Solving this problem will not be easy.

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ckluis
Doesn't this potentially steal bandwidth from my users that they might not
want to give?

Unlike a traditional P2P play where they opt-in?

~~~
world_eggplant
And won't this potentially slow down the loading of your site (well,
everything you're doing on the internet, really) as well, if your user's are
using bandwidth to simultaneously seeding to others?

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antihero
Do you have a mechanism to stop malicious clients sitting on the site and
injecting backdoored scripts and whatnot?

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ukd1
This!

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devx
WebRTC seems to become a great piece of technology. Hopefully the NSA hasn't
made its encryption useless, too. It would be great if it was still secure,
since it's also P2P, so harder to do any of that "lawful" mass interception.

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swinglock
How does it detect me being on (or moving to while still open) a mobile or
otherwise metered connection so that it can disable itself? If I keep the site
open in a tab for an extended time but not currently browsing the site, will I
become a dedicated server?

I don't think you can do the first reliably and if you can't, you shouldn't do
this at all. It's evil and need to be stopped at the browser level.

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ddorian43
I remember there was an alternative to this(open source) but i can't find it,
anyone?

~~~
nightbrawler
[https://github.com/PeerKit/peerkit](https://github.com/PeerKit/peerkit)

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nextw33k
I've never really understood why the browser makers don't build this in at the
browser cache level. Lots of people work in offices and end up sharing links,
it could be a massive saving for everybody.

~~~
fidz
Browser shouldn't share its cache, except it can also deal with privacy issue.

~~~
nextw33k
Not a great deal of privacy problems, SSL content is excluded by default and
you are just asking local peers if they have a binary matching a SHA hash.

The privacy leak might be that you are surfing the net when you should be
working, however a firewall could give you that same amount of information
anyway.

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Fuxy
Lol it's P2P right? So why isn't it just a JS file? Isn't it overcomplicated
just to fit the business model? Why not take donations and sell the analytics
as an aded service?

~~~
abi
Even though most of the work happens on the client side, there's a tracker
server that we run that's crucial to the whole system working (tracks who has
what, serves as an authoritative source for data hashes, fights against
malicious peers, etc.).

We have and will always have a free tier for everyone to use, but for bigger
clients who want more support, we'll have paid plans. We'll also be open
sourcing peerCDN soon.

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dedalus
How is this different from Red Swoosh
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RedSwoosh](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RedSwoosh))
?

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KaiserPro
I thought the whole point of a CDN is that its provides fast reliable
bandwidth?

Without a broker, how is this going to provide any of the above?

~~~
eksith
That's one of the points. The other being offloading the burden of serving
common components off-site. This, I think, specializes in just off-site
availability.

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borplk
Neat. What happens when the client leaves in the middle of the transfer?

~~~
abi
We continue downloading from a different client (generally, files are
downloaded from more than one client to improve speed) or if we estimate that
that's still going to be too slow, we just load the image from the origin
server.

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toblender
Those movie and tv show streaming sites are going to love you.

