Why the Internet Needs the InterPlanetary File System

upstart writes:

Peer-to-peer file sharing would make the Internet far more efficient:

When the COVID-19 pandemic erupted in early 2020, the world made an unprecedented shift to remote work. As a precaution, some Internet providers scaled back service levels temporarily, although that probably wasn't necessary for countries in Asia, Europe, and North America, which were generally able to cope with the surge in demand caused by people teleworking (and binge-watching Netflix). [...]

But is overprovisioning the only way to ensure resilience? We don't think so. [...]

The reality today is that the Internet is more often used to send exactly the same thing to many people, and it's doing a huge amount of that now, much of which is in the form of video. [...]

The real problem is not so much the volume of content being passed around-it's how it is being delivered, from a central source to many different far-away users, even when those users are located right next to one another.

A more efficient distribution scheme in that case would be for the data to be served to your device from your neighbor's device in a direct peer-to-peer manner. But how would your device even know whom to ask? Welcome to the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS).

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