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A comment on Ask HN: What kind of web apps would Martians accessing Earth internet need?.

Re:Ask HN: What kind of web apps would Martians accessing Ea... by karmanyaahm on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @12:19AM (#33431395)
The theoretical subject (routing, etc.) you're looking for is Delay Tolerant Networking.

At the user layer, IPFS or a better collaborative, content-addressed filesytem could be used - request a movie, then watch it once it downloads in 20 minutes. Once it's cached locally, anyone else can access it instantly. Federated communication apps with state-resolution (like Matrix but more asynchronous) would allow instant local communications, while still seamlessly supporting interplanetary contact.

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Re:Ask HN: What kind of web apps would Martians accessing Ea... by shrimp_emoji on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @12:25AM (#33431429)
>request a movie, then watch it once it downloads in 20 minutes. Once it's cached locally, anyone else can access it instantly.

A program I use called Deluge implements this exact functionality!

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Re:Ask HN: What kind of web apps would Martians accessing Ea... by ArcticLandfall on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @12:43AM (#33431522)
BitTorrent is a great example of GPs idea, but neither that nor IPFS will work across those latencies in their current state.

Some distinction will definitely be needed between 'requesting from earth' and 'loading from your roommate' in the UX. Early implementations might even centralize cache-state.

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