[gopher] Question about using Gopher for P2P file transfer instead of HTTP

[Kim Holviala]

Well... libcurl already handles the client-side, and there are several modern Gopher servers too (Wikipedia page has a nice list).

But... Maybe I'm dumb, but I really didn't get the point? How exactly is a single resource-strained server faster than bittorrent? And how exactly is having dozes of servers around the world cheaper than a CDN? Just slightly interested because I actually do those things for living...


- Kim

> On 23 Jan 2014, at 20:05, Coyo <coyo at darkdna.net> wrote:
> 
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> In IRC and a surprisingly large number of other supposedly P2P
> applications, file transfer is negotiated with the P2P protocol, and
> then served with lighttpd and retrieved with curl.
> 
> It seems like a good thing to reconsider this, and switch to gopher.
> My idea is that gopher can be used for caching and "last-mile"
> delivery while BitTorrent, or a similar swarming protocol, is used for
> content distribution. This separation of distribution and last-mile
> delivery is a compromise between repository designs with mirrors, and
> a fully distributed system such as apt-bittorrent, which may put more
> strain on international 10GigE links.
> 
> The reason I'm worried about a better software repository system is
> because mirror servers are expensive, and so is paying through the
> nose for a commercial content distribution network. I can afford
> neither. So, I'm turning to serverless solutions, as I'm sure many
> after me will do as well. As hitting many bittorrent or other swarm
> files many times in succession can take time to warm up, using gopher
> as a final delivery seems like a reasonable and incredibly fast way to
> deliver software repository packages.
> 
> I wonder how difficult it would be to implement a gopher server and
> gopher client? I would only need it as a command line application, and
> mostly the library behind it. Libgopher and libgopherd?
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