Re: A native internet protocol for social media

pá 21. 4. 2023 v 9:28 odesílatel Marcus Rohrmoser <me+swicg@mro.name>
napsal:

> On 20 Apr 2023, at 17:56, Bob Wyman wrote:
>
> > Marcus wrote:
> >
> >> Websockets don't scale, do they? Imagine 10k
> >> subscribers/subscriptions
> >> from 10k instances. That means 10k persistent connections/websockets,
> >> doesn't it?
> >
> > The reality is that Websockets do, in fact, scale much more than many
> > would
> > assume.
>
> What's the argument here? What many may assume? Please.
>
> > A little bit of Googling
>
> So please do it and present the results here.
>
> > turns up many examples of people who have
> > tested Websocket scaling and found that even personal laptops are
> > capable
> > of handling 100's of thousands of simultaneous connections.
>
> Again, 'someone wrote on the internet' isn't an argument.
>
> > The
> > introduction of horizontal scaling, load balancers, or exploitation of
> > various cloud Websocket services,
>
> That's what I mean with heavy, enterprisy deployments. No participant
> wants to do that and so it manifests the divide between dictating
> operators and dependant users. Not my vision.
>
> > can make large numbers of Websockets
> > connections reasonably easy to support and less expensive than
> > creating and
> > tearing down individual short-lived connections. The issue isn't
> > really the
> > number of connections, but rather the volume of traffic generated in
> > serving those connections.
>
> numbers please.
>
> >>  And what is the use case other than real-time? Which shouldn't be a
> >> requirement.
> >
> > Every ActivityPub client that I've used attempts to provide at least
> > near
> > real-time response. I typically get notification of responses, boosts,
> > likes, etc. within seconds of when they are made. So, although
> > real-time
> > may not be a stated requirement, it is certainly a service-level that
> > many
> > clients and servicers attempt to achieve.
>
> We really have to talk about dark patterns, healthy patterns and stress.
> Communication is the end, technology the means. The latter has to serve
> and fit the former. There is no shortage of real-time choices in terms
> of communication, is it? Real-time isn't the sweet spot of ActivityPub
> IMO.
>
> > It would be reasonable to
> > consider specification modifications that make it easier for such
> > service-levels to be achieved.
>
> Consider: yes, pay a price: no. And then explicitly exclude.
>
> > Also, we should consider that there is
> > nearly continuous transfer of information between many servers --
> > particularly when servers are exchanging information with the larger
> > instances. A protocol option that reduces the need for continuous
> > re-establishment of connections would reduce servers' resource
> > requirements.
>
> Designing for huge nodes' needs doesn't align with the 'fedi' nor the
> 'verse' if conflicts with small nodes' needs. And complexity is against
> small nodes.
>
> What is our shared vision?
>

I recall that there was an earlier suggestion regarding the scalability of
WebSockets, though it seems that the burden of proof may have shifted.
What evidence is there that websockets do not scale?

Nostr is a grass-roots network that primarily operates over WebSockets. The
network overlay with about 1,000 nodes, mostly run by hobbyists, is below.
With this infrastructure Nostr has managed to scale from 1,000 accounts to
10 million, despite facing various challenges, including being banned by
China. The network's resilience in such a situation is noteworthy, though
not something to take for granted.
https://nostr.watch/

Regarding whether Nostr can scale to 100 million accounts, it's true that
we need more data points to draw a conclusion. I suspect this will be a big
challenge.

The article below about "One Machine Twitter" is quite fascinating, and it
highlights the challenges and potential solutions when it comes to scaling
networks to large numbers of users.
https://thume.ca/2023/01/02/one-machine-twitter/

If you have any data on websockets, that would be helpful to figure out
whether or not they scale.  But, I would say that realtime updates are a
vital part of any modern social UX.


>
> /Marcus
>
>