[ih] Internet History Lives on the Internet?

[Vint Cerf]

isn't that what SOLID is supposed to do?

v


On Sun, Feb 24, 2019 at 1:47 PM Jack Haverty <jack at 3kitty.org> wrote:

> [Changed the subject line]
>
> I read the recent messages on the forum just before going to sleep, and
> then I had a dream....literally.
>
> There's a whole different perspective on Internet History that might be
> very revealing.  Instead of questions like "Who built the Internet?",
> perhaps also ask "Who paid for the Internet?"  If historians "followed
> the money" like many other investigators, they might find some
> interesting insights.  I didn't realize until today that the IETF is
> funded by ... Me!   Through my payments for my .org domain, maybe by now
> I've paid for an urn or two of coffee at an IETF meeting.
>
> But my dream was of how to fund some kind of Internet repository of
> historical materials, not subject to the management whims or financial
> success of an "institution".   My dream reminded me that such mechanisms
> already exist, have been running at scale for years, are self-funded,
> and seem essentially impossible to excise even when governments or
> industry giants try to do so.
>
> My dream is of a Benevolent BotNet (apologies to my alma mater, BBN).
> Instead of hosting and propagating malware and viruses, or stealing
> computer cycle to mine cryptocurrency, the BBN would simply store,
> replicate, and distribute historical materials on demand.  No doubt
> Richard's comment on Pirate Bay triggered this part of the dream.
>
> Such technology obviously exists, and survives despite serious efforts
> to eradicate it.  Where the Internet was coopted for evil, perhaps the
> evil could be coopted for good?
>
> Maybe even better would be a mechanism that didn't rely on theft and
> subterfuge at all.  Perhaps something akin to the SETI mechanisms, where
> people voluntarily donate their computer resources to analyze radio
> signals, by simply downloading a piece of code and allowing it to run on
> their computers.
>
> So, my dream was that some new software appears, which is freely
> downloaded by thousands or millions of people around the world, which
> uses a few GB of the disk on their machines, and stores historical
> material in a redundant, highly survivable, persistent, distrubuted
> historical warehouse.   One, or many, search engines (go Google!, Bing!,
> DuckDuckGo!) would allow people to find material in the warehouse.
> Anyone could contribute material to the historical archive by simply
> placing a copy into the disk area of their machine that they've shared,
> from where it would be automatically distributed and replicated.
>
> Perhaps this is one or more apps that can be downloaded.  Or perhaps a
> plug in or extension to popular browsers.  Or maybe an addition to
> existing mechanisms like BitTorrent.  Much of the code already exists,
> as evidenced by the millions of computers unwittingly participating in a
> Botnet, or willingly running code like SETI.
>
> Dave's offer of disk space is just the start.  I suspect many people
> would contribute some unused chunk of their computers and network
> capacity.  I have a few Terabytes on my NAS that are empty...you
> probably do too.   With enough participants, the BBN becomes
> self-suficient even as people come and go.
>
> All it would seem to take is for someone to sit down and write the
> code....in the classic Internet spirit of Rough Consensus and Running Code.
>
> Dave....?
>
> /Jack Haverty
>
>
>
> On 2/24/19 7:42 AM, Dave Taht wrote:
> > Joe Touch <touch at strayalpha.com> writes:
> >
> >> On Feb 23, 2019, at 12:42 PM, Jack Haverty <jack at 3kitty.org> wrote:
> >>
> >>     But "internet-history at postel.org", and others like it, even RFC
> >>     repositories, likely exist at the whim of their sponsor.
> >>
> >> Indeed - even assuming volunteers run them - they’re’s still the issue
> >> of hosting and net access.
> >>
> >> I have old repositories (end2end-interest, for one) that even the ISOC
> >> has declined to host (even though the E2E-RG originated there).
> >>
> >> Then again, if you want to see the worst of “free riders”, go attend
> >> an IETF. Companies send armies there for free training and free
> >> consulting.
> >>
> >> PS - speaking as list admin, if anyone wants to offer a place to host
> >> this list more reliably and archivally, please do let me know (contact
> >> me directly off-list).
> > My email list server currently lives on linode in the cloud. The cost is
> > $5/month for 25GB of SSD storage. ( https://www.linode.com/pricing
> > ). Has IPv6 and IPv4. It's paid for via a patreon donation.
> >
> > It's not like I'm using much of that box - or the bandwidth available -
> > how big are these archives?
> >
> > I wouldn't mind sharing that existing list server, but I long ago
> > switched to violating whatever RFC it was that said starttls was a
> > "should" - to *mandate* starttls only - which cuts down on spam (and
> > sigh, about 13% of my measured potential correspondents, still). The
> > biggest administrative cost I'd had was dealing with spam.
> >
> > If that's not an acceptable policy for these lists/archives, well, go
> > burn the 5 bucks/mo on yer own.
> >
> >
> >> Joe
> >>
> >>
> >> _______
> >> internet-history mailing list
> >> internet-history at postel.org
> >> http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> >> Contact list-owner at postel.org for assistance.
> _______
> internet-history mailing list
> internet-history at postel.org
> http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> Contact list-owner at postel.org for assistance.
>


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