I am new to this and I have several questions

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!

Hi,

1. Where and how are the files stored and distributed?

I link you to this answer I gave long time ago. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47450007/where-does-ipfs-store-all-the-data
It’s still up to date.

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?

Most probably you are behind a NAT (your router). While it’s all fine and well when you initiate a connection; when a gateway has to connect to you out of nowhere to retrieve a file the request is blocked.

After a while you can see the video because some node you are connected to, makes you the favor to relay your data, but it’s slow for now, not the best solution.

While go-ipfs 0.4.19 introduces auto-nat and auto-relay, your best bet is still to forward your ipfs host. Check your config file and open the firewall on ipfs ports.

3. Can this be used alongside a VPN?

Not sure I’m able to help you here, but know you can configure ipfs to use different ports than the default ones.

4. Can this be used for this purpose?

Sounds like it can definitely be used for that purpose, check out answer 1. because I sense still a bit of confusion.

When you pin, you simply tell your ipfs instance to keep the data cached. The data are kept in your PC.

About seeding content, right now, you have to pin the videos and keep your pc online. You want to wait for filecoin or other decentralized storage platforms to complete before you can upload and forget.

The other current issue, for now, is that IPFS usage isn’t widespread, so even if people saw your content it would likely be on a gateway. This leads to poor distributed caching and, overall, poor distribution and performance.

I heard brave and opera browsers had plans to integrate ipfs and ens (from ethereum) though.

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I’m still rather new to this myself, and I’m a total layman, BUT,

4. Can this be used for this purpose?
The most promising thing I’ve seen for something like a video site is the incredible js-ipfs, https://js.ipfs.io

js-ipfs can launch an ipfs instance within most modern browsers among other things.

When this is working correctly it seems to be a happy alternative to messing around with gateways, and I’m currently fiddling around with getting a basic video system going. https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmRZZ7H8483SGfodzVHtxx9xesfFnpnxWypCdtZGU3ZGg2/#QmZTSN4paDetfPsaWbzqVn1HLA6HiewQYdJxQhyezhoroJ - Can you Jam with the Console Cowboys in Cyberspace?

Borrowing 100% from https://github.com/ipfs/js-ipfs/tree/master/examples/browser-readablestream

A bunch of servers could have the videos pinned on the backend for a particular amount of time, serving that up to anyone using the js-ipfs.

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