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Distributed Everything

created by sorhed

(idea) by sorhed (2.4 y) (print)   ?   (I like it!) Tue Apr 15 2003 at 9:34:02

(thanks to CloudStrife for grammar revisiting)

Everything is cool. There are simply no alternatives. But it's centralized. That sounds like an oxymoron, but it's true! The world's largest distributed knowledge network is hosted on a single logical server. Why?

Because it's simpler. It's easier to store all of those nodes in a single database. But Everything is changing. We've already accumulated a lot of knowledge and Everything more; we wouldn't like it to disappear. We want more.

Distributed Everything is the same thing we're already used to - but in a whole new multiverse. Everyone will be able to create their own brand new personal Everything, and then integrate it into the larger Core, bringing fresh knowledge with them. Let it be.

But wait - Distributed Everything is a very big concept. There are many pros and cons, myths and facts. Let's see...

Distributed Everything Myths

Myth 1. Distributed systems just don't work.

Bullsh Hell no! All our base are belong to some kind of distributed system. Guess what system? Yes. And it works. We're living in a world of DNS and ARP, TCP/IP and URIs, and everything works exellently and very transparently. It's so perfect that we often don't notice it. It's invisible. That's the way Distributed Everything should be. Just like the original one.

Remember Napster? Or AIMster? Or anything like that? Where they are now? I think they are languishing somewhere in P2P heaven. At the same time, Gnutella and KaZaa are still working. They are pure distributed systems by design.

Myth 2. Making E2 distributed will ruin its instant data availability aspect. Look at Gnutella. It often simply doesn't work.

Maybe Gnutella is indeed an ugly system. But Distributed Everything won't be. Because it's not actually going to be a P2P system. Distributed Everything domains should be hosted on stable, reliable servers, not on users' PCs. We ain't complaining about data availability on the WWW, are we? (of course we are, but c'est la vie). Distributed Everything should be exactly the same, and use technologies like DNS to live.

Watch out for updates. I'll write more soon. Also, I'd like to see the following nodes:

Have a nice day.


printable version
chaos

On Making E2 Distributed E2 Link and Logger Client E2 Explorer Personal Jesus
Distributed Massively Multiplayer Gaming distributed dynamic databases weed gnutella
anathema estimating software development time History and Development of the Banjo in the US distributed document delivery system
Mythos Distributed power architecture transparent C'est La Vie
distributed E2 is a by-product of the existence of The Everything Development Company Everything Day Logs (page 0) Cascading Style Sheets
grammar Alternatives to Everything2
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