Popular Science: What is IPFS?
IPFS, known as the Web3.0 infrastructure, has always had a large amount of popular science materials on the Internet, but because these materials have corresponding knowledge thresholds, most groups are still in a state of half-knowledge about IPFS. Basic users can also understand IPFS. Today, Sulijun uses the simplest vernacular to explain to everyone what IPFS is.
Before understanding the IPFS protocol, we need to know the HTTP protocol currently used by the Internet. The HTTP protocol, as the underlying protocol of the Internet, has been in use for 31 years since its birth. Although the appearance of the HTTP protocol has greatly changed the life style of the public, it also has various disadvantages.
for example.
Xiao Wu searches for some information on the Internet, opens the search engine and enters keywords to search, but the homepage displays only advertisements. After filtering the advertisements, Xiao Wu finds the required information at the end of the web page, clicks to open the website, and the website directly displays 404 mistake.
In desperation, Xiao Wu had no choice but to continue searching for materials, and finally found the materials he needed on a certain cloud disk, but the cloud disk showed that it would take 14 hours to download the materials, and the download could be accelerated if he became a member. Therefore, Xiao Wu signed up as a member, and for the convenience of viewing, Xiao Wu also backed up the information on the cloud disk.
Later, Xiao Wu found that no matter what webpage he browsed, information related to the information he had searched would always appear on the webpage.
A few days later, Xiao Wu opened the cloud disk to check the data, but found that the data had been directly "castrated" by the cloud disk official. When he asked the official, he was told that "the data contained illegal content, so the official deleted it."
As mentioned above, the problems that Xiao Wu encountered such as website 404, page advertisements, search information leakage, and cloud disk data deletion are all problems that most of us are experiencing in real life.
The reason for all problems comes from the HTTP protocol. At the beginning of the HTTP protocol, it was designed as a one-to-many mode, that is, files are placed on a single server, and then the server distributes them to different machines. Such a model has led to various problems such as low Internet efficiency, high centralization, privacy leaks, and 404 errors on web pages.
It is also because of the problems of the HTTP protocol that the birth of distributed storage and IPFS has been accelerated.
The IPFS protocol is a content-addressable, distributed file transfer protocol launched by Protocol Labs. Its goal is to supplement or even replace the existing HTTP protocol, and provide a more secure, free, efficient, and open underlying system for the new generation of Internet.
Compared with the HTTP protocol, the IPFS protocol mainly makes architectural innovations in terms of data storage and file transmission.
"Internet card" and "slow Internet access" are the voices of most people about the current situation of the network. This is because when a large number of users access and download server files at the same time, due to the server's processing power and bandwidth limitations, the access and download speed will drop sharply, resulting in Network congestion. For example, the recent incident of a celebrity surrogacy caused the collapse of the Douban APP, and the slowdown of the 12306 website during the Spring Festival were all caused by this reason.
As a distributed file transfer protocol, the IPFS protocol has carried out an innovative architecture in file transfer. All access will be distributed to different nodes. When the user is downloading relevant data, the system will simultaneously transmit data fragments from several nodes closest to the user's network. Since the decomposed fragments are only 256KB in size, the The transmission efficiency is greatly improved.
Second, when a single server is hacked or goes down, the webpage will not be able to be opened. Like the above example, Xiao Wu encountered a web page 404 problem in the process of searching for information. It is possible that the server was down or the data was deleted, resulting in a 404 problem on the web page.
In terms of search, the IPFS protocol uses content to find URLs. Like Xiao Wu looking for information, in the IPFS network, as long as Xiao Wu enters the content of the data, the system will give the address according to the content of the data. In this way, Xiao Wu will not have to worry about encountering 404 network problems in the future. The processing method of the IPFS protocol not only simplifies the content retrieval process, but also improves the retrieval efficiency.
Furthermore, in the traditional Internet, once the server storing data encounters an "unforeseen event", all data will face the risk of loss and leakage.
In terms of data storage, the IPFS protocol will divide the data file into fragments of several sizes through hash operations, and store the fragments in the global node servers of the IPFS system. As long as there is no corresponding hash value, no matter whether it is an individual or Institutions are not authorized to view the data. In this way, the security of private data can be guaranteed, and there is no need to worry about the risk of your own data being leaked.
In addition, the fragments of files will be backed up multiple times and kept in multiple nodes of the IPFS system, so that even if a node encounters an "accident", other nodes can also guarantee the integrity of the data. Don't worry about your own data being "lost".
In 1991, the birth of the HTTP protocol built the highway of the Internet world. Since then, we have entered the Internet era. But our data cannot be controlled independently, and the leakage of private data has become commonplace.
In 2014, the birth of the IPFS protocol will reshape the entire Internet infrastructure. Although the IPFS protocol is not yet perfect, this does not affect its value and contribution.
