Yesterday I tried to explain my IPFS experiments to a colleague, who was quickly confused by the double use of “node” for (1) a computer in the network and (2) a piece of data in the DAG. Is there accepted concise jargon for unambiguously referring to one or the other?
not sure, but what about peer when referring to network nodes?
This one is really tough! I ran into this problem a lot when I was attempting to help organize the IPFS docs a while back. We tried to start using “IPFS node” or “peer” when referring to an instance of IPFS running on a computer, and “IPLD node” or “DAG node” when referring to the piece of data (and avoid ever using just “node” by itself). I’m not sure it ever stuck very well, though.
Here’s some of the results of a conversation we had about it at last year’s IPFS Developer Summit: https://github.com/ipfs/docs/issues/92
Thanks for the pointer! It’s kind of reassuring that the IPFS developers notice the confusion as well.