In my own industry (Aerospace) I’m wondering if a closed MAID network could be used to handle PLM solutions.
CATIA is used extensively, and when you’re talking aircraft, the CAD files are huge.
Current PLM/PDM software like Teamcentre from Siemens is used to handle the different drawing effectivities.
So for instance imagine the F35, there are several different versions of that Aircraft (Carrier Version, Vertical Take Off & Landing, Short Take Off & Vertical landing etc.).
And then of each of those variants, the drawings will have changed from the very first ones produced, due to design errors, improvements, changes due to access etc. So essentially there is a separate set of drawings for each Aircraft.
Depending on your job, all of these drawings need to be readily accessible and currently they all sit on secure Vaults that have various user levels to prevent unauthorised access and changes.
As mentioned, these drawings are generally rather large (GBs) and sometimes it can take up to 30 minutes to download them from the Vault.
If I understand what I’ve read, I think the MAID network could drastically improve download times and the additional encryption could be very desirable to prevent competitors/foreign powers being able to hack the current Vault servers (It does happen).
Large companies will have hundreds/thousands of computers in their network, and generally they will have a lot of free free disk space since file storage is generally on shared network drives and users are discouraged from saving anything on their HDD.
In terms of payment per upload/download, it wouldn’t be a completely alien concept, since companies currently pay for usage of software like SAP based on each transaction used.
Is this the sort of thing that is envisioned, or is the main focus more for Internet 2.0 and privacy for individuals?
I somehow doubt SAFE in this situation would help speed. The reason is that SAFE is fast for a world wide network because the sources are located all over the world on different routes to the client (relay nodes). But for that network it is likely that the route to the machine requesting the file is already optimised and maxing out the link to the machine receiving the file. Even if it is not the available routes are small and the opportunity for chunks taking different routes are small due to the small size of the network (compared to a global one)
Its the available routes that will limit you. One reason for this is the security that these networks will have at the network equipment. (Virtual) Networks that only certain machines are on or have access to also limit this, as some vaults would be inaccessible to the network as a whole. This may cause issues with consensus too. Its not like a typical large business network but the security required segments/isolates parts of the network with others and SAFE may not be able to work here.
I think it’s both. What the company (Maidsafe) is doing with the Safe Network will encompass SaaS and PaaS as well as enable everyday users to get everything they want out of the legacy internet but in a secure, and as private as they like, fashion. Plus a fast, anonymous, cash like cryptocurrecy with ability for receipts or transpareny via data chains to boot.
Edit: as @neo says any large improvement over speed would probably be unlikely until way down the road when distributed computation could pay vaults for more faster computation and bandwidth. At least my understanding of compute is to have endless distributed scalability of computation plus having access to higher bandwidths.
Although for large businesses that don’t have special segmented (virtual) networks so that certain segments are isolated/inaccessible by other segments might benefit from SAFE in their business.
If the business is spread geographically then the business might just be better off using the global SAFE network and use private files/MDs that are shared and accessed by their APPs
I had thought that it could be faster because the bottleneck is usually the single Vault. The aerospace industry is notoriously stuck in the past, especially in terms of IT. The likes of Airbus were using Windows NT 4.0 until about 2007 and the network infrastructure is nothing like what a lot of you guys will be used to…
I dunno if some parts of the industry are more up-to-date while others are using old gear, I worked with some guys from CAE (Canadian Aerospace Engineering) in the 90’s (using unix/linux) and they were building a “state-of-the-art” management system for a large company here and it was cutting edge stuff and used equipment that required special license from US government to import here. Their systems were top notch.
