Decentralized Web Hosting: A Paradigm Shift in Internet Infrastructure

For small businesses, decentralised hosting can provide many concrete benefits, such as improved security, uptime and cost savings, alongside improved scaling of services.

Decentralised networks use peer-to-peer networks and blockchain to distribute data across a network of distributed servers so that if one node on the network fails, the entire network doesn’t go down. People can still continue to browse unaffected by the outage.

Cost-effectiveness

The possibility of preserving our biggest web asset – the information stored on it – is the latest benefit of decentralised web hosting. Supported by blockchain tech, this alternative of hosting is seeing wider adaptation today, since it is not only more confidential, fault-tolerant, but also more available than its conventional counterparts.

This strategy uses peer-to-peer networks via blockchain technologies to distribute data more securely while providing a more reliable service since requests are spread across multiple devices.

Censorship of websites becomes less viable through global data distribution and topological embedding, because censors can’t tamper with or block data. Furthermore, globalisation contributes to better control of website data, since users can regain some control over the transfer of domain names from servers. In particular for businesses, this functionality is essential: without it, their website may well go offline in the event of disturbances to services caused by cyber attacks on central services that host them in a single server, which is impossible with conventional services that need a single, functioning server at all times.

Reliability

Decentralised web hosting utilises a network-wide collection of hubs to store, host and serve websites. This minimises risks of being hacked, DDoS’ed or taken down; it enhances privacy, and works to avoid interference and censorship. ZeroNet, IPFS and Substratum both promise to secure, redundant and transparent platforms are like a road map that leads us safely to our destination.

Peer-to-peer networking similarly underpins blockchain technology, enabling distribution of data across numerous servers, thereby improving security, flexibility, robustness and lowering the running costs of such services. Censorship resistance is another potential outcome – governments may find it more challenging to shut down websites hosted on these platforms; and decentralised hosting can increase the performance of websites while simultaneously reducing energy use by removing the need for large data centres. All these businesses and applications could potentially make decentralised hosting an attractive service for people and small businesses.

Security

Decentralised web hosting is a new kind of web infrastructure that gives people more ownership over their content online. It is also more reliable and secure. Decentralised storage uses peer-to-peer technology to distribute the files of a website across a network of computers, making it more resistant to attack or failure than a more conventional ‘server-centric’ solution.

Increased data privacy and security by increasing your protection from someone hacking your information, as well as holding up against online censorship, especially in countries that have strict guidelines on what you can and can’t see online.

Decentralised web hosting is very new technology that nonetheless has the potential to drastically change the way websites are hosted and data is shared online. It can already be done, and several platforms currently exist that enable decentralised web hosting. These include: ENS, Diode and MaidSafe, which do everything from setting up a .eth domain name to coding and deploying apps on a decentralised web server.

Privacy

Decentralised web hosting also has clear advantages for content creators themselves because it can enable greater stability and resistance to censorship by spreading website data across a network of servers, removing the reliance upon centralised servers, and at the same time diminishing the danger of the site going down – there is simply no way for it to go down. Moreover, as we will see in Chapter 3, peer-to-peer networks and blockchain technology can ensure that the data storage is immutable and open to scrutiny.

So rather than pay to rent plots of server space from a dedicated data centre, a decentralised hosting environment costs nothing, with data distributed among thousands (if not millions) of devices being used simultaneously as hosts or clients. More importantly, neither the hosting nor the clients need to rely on specific connectors to link in – all they need is one of the worldwide web’s many protocols. And what’s more, at scale, it’s far harder for governments to retaliate with censorship – let alone suppression of standard web hosting – meaning that decentralised hosting has become an invaluable tool for web-based journalists working in countries with strict censorship rules. It allows them to publish on sensitive issues without fear of official reprisals. What’s more, it protects personal information better. And it offers improved privacy security, greater scaleability and more flexibility than any other form of web hosting that’s currently available.