
Arc.io – A Crowdfunded Distributed CDN - rckrd
https://arc.io/
======
etaioinshrdlu
So... Hetzner bandwidth is $0.00112/GB, almost 18x cheaper than arc.io
([https://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Traffic/en](https://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Traffic/en))

And Hetzner is a no-nonsense real company that's been around since 1997.

Hetzner machines have dedicated 1Gbps connections. Arc.io promises nothing.

Arc.io is a faceless company with no track record, no history, and doesn't say
how long they've been around.

Who would you choose?

~~~
slips
What would our technological landscape look like currently if everyone was
hostile against new companies? Old doesn't mean good.

~~~
etaioinshrdlu
I don't intend to be mean to new entrants.

The crypto/distributed space has an issue with vaporware and not living up to
claims. Arc.io has a lot to prove, in other words.

I'm hoping users will think twice before using infrastructure that's not
ready, or up to par, or not likely to have longevity.

~~~
weego
That's a very kind interpretation of the space. I'd have gone with confidence
tricksters, frauds and charlatans.

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jgrahamc
So, I work for a company that provides CDN services so take that into account,
but, putting on my personal, not work, head, this type of service worries me
for two reasons.

1\. It's asking website owners to install JavaScript that uses the website
owner's visitors' bandwidth for purposes other than visiting the website. That
feels misaligned and not something I'd expect as a user visiting a website.

2\. It also puts me, the end user, in an odd position because I don't control
the content that is being stored and served from my machine.

Putting those two things together I find myself worrying about the following
scenario: I visit site example.com that serves content that is legal in my
jurisdiction. example.com is using arc.io and while I'm browsing example.com
some content that is illegal in my jurisdiction is served to someone. This
puts me in a position where illegal content was stored and served from my
machine.

I think that puts me in a dangerous position just for surfing example.com.

If I signed up for Arc Rewards then I might get paid for storing and serving
illegal content.

~~~
grun
Ansgar from Arc.

> It's asking website owners to install JavaScript that uses the website
> owner's visitors' bandwidth for purposes other than visiting the website.

We endeavor to create a communal web where everyone cooperates and benefits,
and we want to make that as easy as just visiting your favorite website.
Everyone shares a little surplus bandwidth to help each other load the web
faster, sustain their favorite sites, and earn rewards. Everyone wins.

That's a different web than the current web. Right now, with the current web,
no one shares and nothing is shared with you. The web isn't communal; it's
adversarial. Ads interrupt you and trackers stalk you. We want to change that.

It will take time. Just like how the once frightful notions of getting into a
stranger's car (Uber) or sleeping in a stranger's house (Airbnb) are now
banal. These things take time.

But, of course, if preferred, an opt out is two clicks away. Sites with Arc
must display Arc's widget in the lower left so visitors can learn about Arc
and easily opt out (or back in).

> I think that puts me in a dangerous position just for surfing example.com.

When one visits nytimes.com, they don't know what files will be downloaded and
cached on their computer before they hit [enter]. They trust nytimes.com not
to hand them inappropriate content (porn, violence, etc).

Arc has that same responsibility -- to only cache appropriate, legal content.
It's our responsibility to get that right. And we will.

    
    
      - Sites, and their content, are reviewed and vetted before they get access to Arc's CDN.
    
      - Automated checks are run on assets for appropriateness, a la Google's SafeSearch Cloud Vision API. Inappropriate content never enters the network.
    

On top of that, only fragmented, encrypted data is cached on devices. Devices
never receive the full puzzle -- only a single, fragmented puzzle piece,
scrambled beyond recognition.

Hope that helps.

Also, and wholly unrelated: big fan of Movie Code. =]

~~~
urthen
Honestly, I consider this on the same level of malicious behavior as if a site
added a bitcoin mining script on their page to "share" some of my CPU. By your
own admission, opt out is two clicks away, and even that requires you to 1)
recognize the Arc logo and 2) know what it does and that you can opt out.

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ShakataGaNai
I experimented with one of the early P2P CDN's, which appears to be the same
thing Arc.io is doing. Very quickly the widget ends up on all the major
adblock lists and... it does basically nothing for you.

One one site that had a few hundred unique visitors per day, and the P2P CDN
"saved" me kilobytes per month in bandwidth costs. Maybe a higher traffic site
would see more benefit (especially if it isn't focused at tech people who have
a nearly 100% install rate for ad blockers).

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fwip
I'm curious about this line:

>Users receive 10% in user rewards for sharing bandwidth with the network.

Does this mean the users who are visiting the site with the Arc widget (acting
as seeds for the p2p cdn)? Is Arc going to send me a check in the mail, and if
so, what registration do I need to do to get that money?

If most users don't sign up to be paid, what happens to their "share" of that
10%? Is it redistributed to other users, or kept by Arc?

~~~
qmarchi
Reading their full page on this, the current setup is donating the currency to
Wikipedia (which, individually I'm fine with), and I imagine that if it's
unclaimed and your nose/browser is unlinked to your account, money is
continued to be sent there.

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dkh
Appears to just be using webtorrent, though this does not seem to be
mentioned. It's a clever technology, but also has limitations and
compatibility concerns.

I'm not sure what other optimizations they're doing or what guarantees it has.
Wish they had a page with more complex assets being delivered via their CDN to
test performance. Their own site is being delivered this way, but I don't
think that's the use-case. There are many ways to host simple static sites
free/cheap -- the big CDN costs often come from media like videos or images,
which in addition to being delivered also need to also have very low latency
to "feel" fast. (Not sure a jpeg fragmented and delivered over WebRTC is going
to outperform a CDN delivering it over a single HTTP request regardless of how
fast it is. Adaptive video is also not going to be straightforward.)

Price doesn't seem appealing to me given how it works and how little is
explained. But it's a cool concept, and I'm all for new ways to decentralize
content and/or save on delivery costs.

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johnklos
"bank-grade 256-bit AES". Is that similar to "as honest as a politician"?

They're lacking details, and yet they expect site owners to simply load some
random JavaScript from their servers. Sorry, no.

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degenerate
I clicked around curious how it works behind the scenes. Here is how they
explain it:

    
    
        https://arc.io/product#how-does-arc's-cdn-work-technically?
    

(you have to copy-paste the link because HN won't auto-link a URL with a
trailing question mark)

~~~
charlesetc
[https://arc.io/product#how-does-arc's-cdn-work-
technically](https://arc.io/product#how-does-arc's-cdn-work-technically)

~~~
the_common_man
Have to add a trailing question mark

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katsura
Their pop-up thingy doesn't show up properly in Firefox (Linux). When I click
on it, it shows one and a half paragraph, and no scrollbar is available.

~~~
applecrazy
Same in Chrome (Mac).

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pfisch
The pricing link doesn't work on my iPhone/mobile safari.

Now the site is down...which makes me think this cdn doesn't work so well.

I currently pay ~500/mo for a cdn so I am a real potential customer.

~~~
thinkmassive
Content from [https://arc.io/pricing](https://arc.io/pricing) :

    
    
        CDN Bandwidth        $0.02 per GB
        Egress (worldwide)   (76% cheaper than AWS1)
        
        Usage is billed monthly, on the first day of each calendar month.
        
        Additionally, only peer-to-peer egress bandwidth is billed; all peer-to-peer ingress bandwidth is free. For example, if a 100kB image is loaded from Arc's peer-to-peer network, only 100kB of bandwidth is billed, not 200kB (100kB of egress + 100kB of ingress).

~~~
namibj
Still 2x compared to backblaze b2. E.g., it better have good performance.

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ipsum2
backblaze b2 is not a CDN.

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tiernano
Not directly, no, but stick Cloudflare in front and now you have a cdn that
the storage is cheap and depending on tier you pick, cdn is free. Even the
bandwidth from b2 to Cloudflare is free.

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SomaticPirate
They mention transparency but I don't see anything being open-source? Seems
like something so community focused would benefit from that.

~~~
sdan
Really hoped they would provide some open-sourced repo.

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bashbjorn
This is neat and all, but their widget.js file is 888KB.

For comparison, Bootstrap is 180KB, Elm is 29KB and Vue.js is 100KB.

It might not be much for sites otherwise dealing with large multimedia assets,
but for anyone going for lean / fast web development, this seems to be a no-
go.

~~~
fiws
Their widget includes vue … for a button with a pop-over.

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z3t4
There is really no incentive to go via Arc.io. Instead make your users share
content between each other client's. Still cool tech though, if it works, I'm
a bit skeptical due to browser restrictions.

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gloflo
Do I read this correctly that this wants to hijack my visitors internet
connections to send arbitrary data to other people?

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MentallyRetired
Interesting.

How does this affect GDPR? Are we using & monetizing customers' bandwidth
without their permission?

~~~
gruez
>Are we using & monetizing customers' bandwidth without their permission

not covered by General _Data_ Protection Regulation.

