Some data display and feature suggestions aimed at giving users more insight into the status of running IPFS
Does IPFS show:
- Which peer is the file I am currently downloading from and how much data it contributed to the file
- What peer is my currently “pinned”/uploaded file being shared with and how much data is it claiming for that file
- The current “health” of a file in the IPFS network, that is, how many copies of the file have been copied, and how many nodes have participated in the sharing of the file (this is a new function, which is not equal to the number of nodes participating in the sharing, because every A node may only retain part of the file, so a file with a health of 10 may have 10+ nodes participating in its sharing). and a graph or volatility of health fluctuations over time.
- All IPFS nodes and DHT nodes that have been connected to this machine are visualized on the map (not just the nodes that are currently connected). If possible, a map of the entire IPFS network nodes probed by the user’s local daemon over a long period of time can be displayed, as well as the data exchange metadata between them. This is an encouragement for web exploration. The “Network Mapping” announcement in the forum is not easy for everyone to see. Some of its functions can be integrated in IPFS-Desktop, allowing everyone to directly and visually view the process of interaction between the IPFS network and the local node. It is conducive to building confidence in decentralized and distributed technologies, because you will no longer look at a boring program that never changes significantly.
If the map had weekly node snapshots, users could drag the timeline to see ipfs trends, which should help attract volunteers to run daemons. One of the drawbacks of the BitTorrent world is that its visualization is weak. Complex visualization exists only in the occasional “BitTorrent Network Measurement” project, and BitTorrent crawlers are also quite difficult to deploy for ordinary users. Users just know to give Qbittorrent a magnet link and wait for it to complete, users don’t know that Qbittorrent is connected to a technology network that covers most of the world’s skilled people with Internet ideals. Users don’t feel it.
Can IPFS add functionality:
- Only “pinned” a part of the file “shard”. It can be the part with the lowest health of the entire file at present. This feature offers the possibility of more decentralized collaboration on large files. And provide users with a “one dollar each” option, making it easy to share the pressure of a large but important file (such as wikipedia_en_all_maxi_2023-02.zim, 95GB).
- Add the button “Open the location of the downloaded file” in IPFS-Desktop to facilitate the use of files downloaded by ipfs
- Automatically “pinned” the files in the specified folder. This is to work with BitTorrent to share the same file between two networks. But maybe someone could also develop a canonical way of interacting between the two networks?
These ideas come from traditional BitTorrent clients like Qbittorrent, and IPFS should include what they can, and then go beyond them.