The internet is rotting, as we have already explained. A page available today can disappear tomorrow forever and without warning, leaving a hole, causing a loss. The Ephemeral P2P project allows us to explore that fragile aspect of the web with a page that only exists when we are viewing it. At the same time, its technical exercise is remarkable, and reminds us that there are other ways to serve content on the network of networks.
When we read an article on Wikipedia, it is very common to notice that its references use a kind of mirror in the Internet Archive. The goal is none other than to avoid the classic 404 "Not Found". That way, the user can access a copy of the content regardless of the state of its server or service. Even if the information is outdated, that is always preferable to receiving nothing.
However, there is another way to share and exchange information, which is P2P. The BitTorrent protocol is one of the most popular examples, but it is also possible to apply the same concept to distribute something specific like a web page. That's how we get to Ephemeral P2P, a project by Gabe 'losvedir' Durazo on GitHub. How does it work? Without much fuss, the page only exists when we are viewing it.
Ephemeral P2P, a P2P page that exists only in our browser
That's right: When you enter Ephemeral P2P, the received copy tells us that it was obtained from another browser that is viewing it. In essence, the user becomes part of a small network focused exclusively on distributing the page. There is no server in the equation, and if the last user decides to close the tab... it will disappear.
Ephemeral P2P also allows users to create their own P2P pages to reproduce the experiment beyond the original text, permanently available on GitHub for obvious reasons. At a very high level, we can say that Ephemeral P2P works with a combination of Elixir (the language) and Phoenix (the web development framework for Elixir), taking advantage of its built-in websocket support. The user counter of the mini network appears at the top. Go visit it!
Official site: Click here
