Messengers, it's time to take the next step
In the last couple of years, such messengers as WhatsApp, Telegram, Viber have changed the usual course of content consumption. Now all the content is concentrated in them, the audience is growing at a wild pace, they have changed a lot, but most importantly they have yet to the way content is delivered, or more precisely, the P2P CDN. Why P2P CDN is a necessary step - we will consider all this in a post.
Since the launch of the Telegram, the messengers have begun to absorb the functionality of social networks and it is already very difficult to say where the social network is and where the messenger is, only one can hint that we have an instant messenger: the content can only be viewed in the application, or the web version is very limited. Heavy content is beginning to appear in the messengers, if you look at the Telegram channels, they are replete with photos, and more recently, video content. And all this content should be delivered to the end user.
Issue
The severity of the content - the main problem that the messengers will have to solve, everyone decides how it can, WhatsApp (Facebook) - pays for the server due to your data, Telegram - makes the ICO and moves towards the blockchain. But the main problem - the high cost of infrastructure does not go anywhere, just a source of money for support is changing.
But there is a second problem - countries with slow Internet and expensive Internet in any country: people can and are ready to consume more content, but either access is physically limited - (bad signal) or very expensive.
Solution
The solution to these problems is very simple and I would say “native” - P2P CDN. Not for nothing, in the latest versions of iOS, Apple always keeps Bluetooth and Wi-Fi turned on by default, it’s not for nothing that Telegram stores gigabytes of cached media - all this can be used, having spent a minimum of development time - by uniting all users of a particular messenger into a huge Mesh network.
Mesh network is a type of association each with each when all users of the application (for example, on the bus) form a single network in which information can be transmitted in isolation from the large Internet.
But how? What for?
In order to create a Mesh network on iOS / Android, you need to write a couple of lines of code - for this, there are ready-made frameworks from platform developers, there is a bunch of useless “offline messenger” for anyone in the forest or on an airplane in the play market/app store.
What can be transmitted through the Mesh network?
- Content in channels
- User-User messages
- Any heavy content from the channel/chat/personal messages
How should this work?
Suppose the situation of a standard big city - in the morning you take the subway and watch the news feed, most likely on your list - not one channel, but several. All the content you consume is downloaded via the Internet connection. Moreover, many people watch the same channels while being connected via the same connection (wi-fi access point in transport or public institution). The same content is downloaded again and again for different users.
That doesn't sound optimal, does it?
But this can be improved - suppose you enter the railway carriage not at the final station, but at the next one, but there are already people in the railway carriage and they have already read the same channels that you usually watch. As soon as you enter the railway carriage, the application will connect to the same application and start updating the content through it. In other words - almost instantly you synchronize your news feed with the person who has already uploaded it. And in the future, the application can optimize performance by downloading content only to 1 device via the Internet, transmitting networks to neighboring devices via Mesh. But even this is not all - if you are in a place with a poor connection, and you need to give the document to your friend who is next to you, the instant messenger can find it and send the document via P2P network. What ultimately saves Internet traffic as you and a friend, and even the instant messenger!
