An idea for dual homed services

Idea for implementing dual-homed services:

  • I run a service on catvideos.safenet
  • I mirror it on catvideos.me for all the backwards folks
  • user goes on catvideos.me
  • page includes catvideos.safenet/zerocat.gif
  • js handler for successful image load redirects browser to catvideos.safenet
  • otherwise, i keep serving my page through the old internet, but the page shows a banner “hey this page is available on the safe network, do you wanna try?” then redirect to download page if they do

This takes about 2 lines of javascript, and I’m almost sure it’s completely ethical.

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This sounds like a competition in how to make things more complex and more expensive.

How many .onion sites do anything like that? None. You click on a .onion link, nothing happens. Then you google it and you learn that you need the Tor Browser. End of story.

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This is a recommendation for those who want to be accessible even for the old internet people.

I, for example, have a deep emotional need to share my cat videos with everybody. I prefer doing it the SAFE way, but I still want others to be able to enjoy them. It’s my personal choice, so I implement a dual-homed setup, and bury the haters under my scorn.

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Yes, there are theoretical examples that justify that approach. But since you’re already paying for hosting and domain name, the only situation where your approach makes sense is if you’re serving content that’s banned in some jurisdictions so you need to avoid censorship or prosecution.

By definition (since you are paying for hosting and have a registered domain name) you’re not anonymous, so your scenario is of a content provider located in a free country who serves content to people in censored or non free countries.

Who else would pay for hosting and domain registration and also run on Safenet?

I’m pretty sure most of the time I feel like saying “because who else would” I’m just mistaking my own priorities for universal truth.

But let’s consider what we’re talking about: $100 a year for hosting, $10 for the domain (both of which have been taken granted until now, so it’s hard to consider them “extra” expenses) and I can reach only about 100,000x as many people at the moment… Let me think about it :joy_cat:

Here it is again, because I think it’s pretty awesome but it got buried under noise:

Idea for implementing dual-homed services:

1 Like

You’d have to have a way to intercept the DNS query for .safenet which means the user already has the add on.
Of course in that case you probably would rather activate the Safe client in the same browser add on and make sure the request is fulfilled, so there’d be no “on error”. Unless you think it’d be better to have multiple add-ons, the first of which just tells you that you need another add on.

And you could proxy catvideos.safenet through catvideos.me (if you installed a proxy driver for Safenet on your Web servre), so unless the SAFE network was unreliable you wouldn’t need to mirror it.

(i copied this from here because it somehow escaped from getting migrated)

… is the idea! If the addon is there, then the test request gets successfully fulfilled, and I know I can redirect to the safe network. If I had an error, I know there’s no point to even try. TADA! problem solved

Mirror, as in, showing the same contents. How I do it (duplicate or proxied) is really outside of the scope of what I was talking about.

I just showed a super easy way to have a site do the right thing on the safe network, but have it accessible through the old internet as well, for the time being. I know it’s a sinful desire in the eyes of many to compromise just for reaching a few hundred million more potential users, but those who are willing to live with the stigma, here’s a way to lessen the pain. Simple as that.

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Don’t mind @janitor. He’s a professional antagonist. Keeps us honest.

I understand your desire and it has merit. I’m thinking of another aspect, though:

Host your website on Digital Ocean or the like, where you can set the machine to do as you like. Then you can have it access the images directly form the SAFE Network and serve them over the old net. You could have a note prompting others to access them by installing a browser plug in to access them directly, if they like, and teases for extra cool stuff available only on SAFE Network. All they have to do is add the browser extension to access it. Good come-on for the new network.

2 Likes

I hope he’s paid well, he’s doing a great job being that.

I would say complementary, not “another.” My idea is just a teeny-tiny thingymabob for easy detection/redirection or [fill in the blanks for what to do if safe is unaccessible]; it’s not trying to do more than that :smile_cat:

The image loading part is not about showing the image, but about checking if it loads, because if it does, then we’re “safe” to redirect. If it doesn’t load, then we can do whatever best fit our personality: ignore it and show the old internet version but feel superior secretly, educate, show a banner, redirect to the install site without asking, threaten them with the NSA, anything.

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… is the idea! If the addon is there, then the test request gets successfully fulfilled, and I know I can redirect to the safe network. If I had an error, I know there’s no point to even try. TADA! problem solved

Mirror, as in, showing the same contents. How I do it (duplicate or proxied) is really outside of the scope of what I was talking about.

I just showed a super easy way to have a site do the right thing on the safe network, but have it accessible through the old internet as well, for the time being. I know it’s a sinful desire in the eyes of many to compromise just for reaching a few hundred million more potential users, but those who are willing to live with the stigma, here’s a way to lessen the pain. Simple as that.

and thats why tor is so easy to use and mainstream…

The problem of easing adoption is real, there is no real benefit from another half-made tool a very few people use, for maidsafe to really solve problems a certain level of adoption is necessary.

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oh hi little post, i’ve been missing you from here! :smiley_cat:

thanks @happybeing

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yes, this is what I want to do on my wordpress site…

I want to see his cat videos

I need to mention here that I think that these so-called “dual-homed services” will be utterly essential to the rapid spread of maidsafe, so much so that I’m working on (half of) the solution. I think as regards myself and the Klouds team, this will be the culmination of about 2 years work. Basically, it is a hosting provider / borganism of machines designed to place applications on servers suited to run them well, extremely near to the users concerned, and infinitely replicatable to meet the need for “horizontal scaling.”

The web isn’t going to go away, therefore we need to make sure to show the people on the web that other ways are possible.

Below is an off the top of my head list of individual internets…

  • Tor Onions
  • Freenet
  • I2P
  • Maidsafe
  • Ethereum
  • The Internet as defined by 8.8.8.8 & 8.8.4.4
  • National Splinternets
  • Iran
  • Pakistan
  • North Korea
  • China
  • Hyperboria
  • IPv6 vs IPv4 (soon it will be poor 'net vs rich 'net…)
  • Facebook (large enough to be a net unto itself)

And I’m quite confident there are many more, and the problem is this: There is no standardized method for putting information in and getting it back out.

3 Likes

This sounds cool though I’m not even sure what it is :joy_cat:

I’ll start a new thread about an idea inspired by this.

HERE