Peer to peer to protocols (P2P) are useful for creating applications that are less reliant on central physical and digital infrastructure. With a p2p backend, an application can easily move between connecting people over the internet, to local and ad-hoc networks, and working entirely offline. We take this ability a step further by integrating several protocols into web browsers so that applications can be authored and distributed just like any other data in the network.
This talk will go over some of these protocols, their strengths and weaknesses, and how we have applied them to the web. We'll also have a live demo of what it looks like as a developer.
This talk will be using the desktop version of the open source Agregore Browser, a minimal web browser built on top of the Electron framework which deeply integrates several protocols everywhere that a browser might use a URL.
The specific protocols we will be going over are IPFS, Hypercore-Protocol, and BitTorrent.
We'll also be talking about the benefits of using P2P software in ad-hoc mesh networks and how it can enable communities to make the most of their local networks.
Feel free to install the browser ahead of time if you'd like to follow along for the live coding portion.
Speakers: Mauve Signweaver