[jude-]

If you replace the word "IPFS" with "BitTorrent," this article is still true. Similarly, if you replace "IPFS" with "BitTorrent" in most of the comments here, the comments are still true.

If you understand how BitTorrent works -- including its strengths and limitations -- you'll understand how IPFS works.

[sneak]

Minor nit: BitTorrent does not allow one to maintain a persistent URI to changing/updated data, as IPNS does.

[davidgerard]

I'm seeing others here point out that IPNS basically doesn't work - so it doesn't really either, in practice.

[jude-]

Isn't that handled by mutable torrents a la BEP 46?

[rakoo]

Yes, but I'm not sure any dht client handles that functionality.

[Groxx]

Depending on how you measure it: RSS feeds for updates fit this bill, and they've been around for a decade or more: https://github.com/KDE/ktorrent/blame/3ce105f4d1c3b4c178aaf3...

[sneak]

RSS feeds are centralized and rely on web servers and DNS and are thus straightforward to censor or otherwise force offline via government orders, ddos, provider legal threats, et c.

[Groxx]

Or sneakernet-distributed RSS files, or visiting IP addresses directly, or spread over gossip, or replace dns with namecoin...

Broadly I agree, but IPNS isn't really part of IPFS, it's an external thing that fakes mutability of another thing that cannot be changed. There are many examples of this kind of thing (e.g. DNS itself, abstracting over IP addresses), with an incredibly wide variety to deal with the various tradeoffs, and IPFS itself not hardcoding a single approach is a good thing. BitTorrent doesn't either, but some tactics have sprung up organically, as has occurred for IPFS (e.g. https://www.increaseo.com/eth-domains-ipfs/).

[jude-]

Hate to break it to you, but this generally true about Internet infrastructure. IPFS isn't going to fix that. In fact, IPFS, like BitTorrent, is trivial to DDoS by inserting malicious nodes in the DHT in order to block key lookups.

[thomas]

Not so minor!