I am trying to bundle a few things I don’t fully understand about how IPFS works. I managed to set it up on my computer (and on several friends’ computers) - everything seems to work, but I am unsure about a few things. Btw, I am using Manjaro Gnome (Linux) for this + ipfs-go + ipfs-desktop (appimage)
1. Where and how are the files stored and distributed?
So, let’s say I add the Video.mp4 to my folders through ipfs-desktop. For one, I do not see a progress bar while adding it, but what happens next? Is the file split into chunks, stored on my “blocks” (.ipfs) folder, and also sent to nodes automatically? Say I add Video.mp4 then I close my ipfs-desktop (daemon basically), is that Video.mp4 on the ipfs network?
2. Some gateway links work, but most don’t. From my tests very few links load. Is this an issue from my side or the other end usually?
Getting a “504 Gateway Time-out” quite often. Example https://ipfs.infura.io/ipfs/QmQAgik3cFZL9dL5cFfpb4LWZW6Ym7JVZMDL8k5scUJUYv/TROM%20Human%20Voice (any of those videos) - at times they work, at times they don’t.
3. Can this be used alongside a VPN?
I have Private Internet Access with port forwarding. As I understand IPFS uses port 8080, and if that port is used by the system/application then ipfs cannot work. If I use a port forwarding with my VPN should I add this port to ipfs for better results?
4. Can this be used for this purpose?
We have a big project with many videos (tromsite.com) that we produce and we are playing around with this, trying to decentralize our videos. Is IPFS suitable for the job? What’s the best practice to do this? I suppose to share on IPFS all of our videos then “pin” them (several of us from around the world) in order to “seed”? And what does “pin” really means?
Maybe there are too many questions already so I’ll stop here. I’ve seen many videos about ipfs and read about it and I am trying to properly understand it. It seems like an amazing project. Thank you!