IPFS

Another take on content centric networking, see also Van Jacobson on CCN and Named Data Networking

Here is the blurb from their website ipfs.io, but the best intro is the video included below …

IPFS is a peer-to-peer distributed file system that seeks to connect all computing devices with the same system of files. In some ways, IPFS is similar to the Web, but IPFS could be seen as a single BitTorrent swarm, exchanging objects within one Git repository. In other words, IPFS provides a high throughput content-addressed block storage model, with content-addressed hyperlinks. This forms a generalized Merkle DAG, a data structure upon which one can build versioned file systems, blockchains, and even a Permanent Web. IPFS combines a distributed hashtable, an incentivized block exchange, and a self-certifying namespace. IPFS has no single point of failure, and nodes do not need to trust each other.

At first glance this is an attempt to get CCN working, in the absolutely simplest way by patching together existing tech. I respect this, and it’s not a diss to say so. Having a working stack to play with will be valuable. However I think the hackyness of this approach will prove to be too much to actually implement, and it will fall back to a complete ground up stack like the NDN folks to get something that is performant and has features like mobile nodes built in.