Introduction
Have you ever wondered how the content from Steemit or any other page is delivered to your computer? How it is possible that my friend who lives in Malaysia will be able to read this text, which was written in Poland? After all, the distance between our homes amounts to about 9,000 kilometers in a straight line!
While many people have never traveled such distance, unimaginable amount of content is streamed across the world every day to be displayed on our screens. Internet has become essential for us to keep in touch with our friends (Facebook), share moments from our lives (Snapchat), earn money (Steemit) or even find a spouse (Tinder). I could give such examples endlessly, and it only proves that our necessity for the Internet is already huge and is increasing day by day. For this reason, the overall amount of content must be also increasing.
Considering these factors, a current internet distribution infrastructure will not be capable of holding such load in the future. In this article, I want to discuss a decentralized solution to create a network delivering content in a more efficient and less expensive way - NOIA. I will also show you how to set up your own NOIA node and start earning a passive income!
What is the problem?
Although the internet has become essential medium for us and its market is worth billions of dollars, the distribution infrastructure faces serious problems. First of all, it is devoid of integrity, as the main factor which has an impact on the broadband speed in a particular country is an economic development. For instance, there are countries in Africa, where majority of citizens simply cannot afford an internet connection, so the broadband speed is very rarely greater than 10 Mbps.
| Region | Broadband Speed Greater than 10 Mbps (2017) |
|---|---|
| Global | 53% |
| Asia Pacific | 53% |
| Latin America | 27% |
| North America | 64% |
| Western Europe | 54% |
| Central and Eastern Europe | 58% |
| Middle East and Africa | 17% |
In the past, whenever you wanted to watch a video, download an image or load a page, your computer had to connect directly to the main server where content was hosted. Your connection often had to travel across the world, and due to the lack of integrity, this usually involved latencies and very slow data transfer speed. This created a really serious challenge for website operators to deliver content efficiently to geographically distant end-points. As a solution to these problems, Content Delivery Networks have been established.
Content Delivery Network (CDN)
CDN is a system of servers dispersed across the world whose main purpose is to store the content of the websites for later retrieval. Whenever computer sends a request to the particular website, it will be connected to the closest CDN server instead of the main server. This eliminates situation when web content has to travel thousands of kilometers in order to reaching the requester.
Advantages of the current CDN market
- Improved accessibility - users all around the world can use the site in a much more efficient way. Due to that, the traffic on the site is significantly increased, thereby improving its Google rates and positioning.
- Stronger security - CDN reduces the risk of a malicious software or DDoS attacks on the main server by creating an additional protecting layer between user and the main server.
- Decreased expenses - CDN eliminates problem of handling high volume traffic and foreign hosting on local servers which can be extremely expensive. In addition, as the site becomes more popular, advertising profits will be significantly higher.
- Minimized crashes - the traffic on the site can be distributed between CDN infrastructure, thereby decreasing the possibility of the crash during rush hours.
Disadvantages of the current CDN market
- Cenralization - CDN infrastructure is distinctly centralized and depends on the biggest corporations, creating a risk of a single point of failure. For example, plenty of important websites have recently went down for 4 hours due to a human mistake in Amazon.
- Limited geo-dispersion - there are still areas where CDN infrastructure cannot be placed or is not developed enough. For this reason, its advantages are significantly reduced.
- High expenses - although CDN significantly reduces expenses, scaling bandwidth-intensive content worldwide is still prohibitively expensive.
- Monopolization - current CDN market is singularly monopolized by Akamai and Amazon. This results in a situation where providers have full control over the prices and condition of the services.
- Increasing demand for content - video content consumption is expected to grow four times by 2020. CDN infrastructure is not developing fast enough to efficiently deliver such amount of data.
What if we could have a global, decentralized network, which eliminates a majority of problems faced by current CDN infrastructure, while maintaining its benefits? I have to probably surprise you, but such infrastructure already exists and your computer may become a part of it!
NOIA comes with an appropriate solution
In every household there is a large number of bandwidth and storage resources that are not fully utilized every day. Separately those resources are unnecessary and useless, but NOIA combines them in order to form a widely distributed, powerful and decentralized layer of internet infrastructure.
Thanks to such approach problems faced by the conventional CDN infrastructure are eliminated. The network is fully independent and decentralized which avoids single point of failure and makes it more stable. Geo-dispersion is virtually unlimited since everyone across the world with internet access is able to set up a node. Expenses are significantly reduced, as there is no central point which controls the prices and website owners do not have to pay high margins to the CDN operators.
NOIA creates a fully independent economic ecosystem and a textbook example of a free market. Individuals can set up their own nodes, utilizing unused bandwidth resources in order to earn weekly rewards in NOIA tokens. On the other hand, website operators can distribute their content in a much more effective way in exchange for those tokens. Such situation enables a natural balance between demand and supply, and determines pertinent prices.
Architecture of NOIA
Proper operation of NOIA infrastructure is ensured by two separate layers:
Governance layer (Smart Contracts)
Governance layer is a set of Smart Contracts based on Ethereum blockchain which determine how the value expressed in NOIA tokens is transferred among the network. These Contracts cannot be modified or violated in any way, so transactions are performed fully autonomously, without any central form of control. The main competences of the Governance layer are:
- Enable customers to purchase services - Smart Contract calculates how much of the service customer can acquire and determines the price expressed in NOIA tokens.
- Reward Worker Nodes - Smart Contract pays out reward to the Worker Node according to its contribution to the network.
Content scaling layer (CSL)
Content scaling layer is a combination of three disruptive technologies: next-generation Peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing protocols, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Blockchain. It is mainly responsible for managing the way that content is distributed in order to improve its effectiveness. For example, machine learning may be used to predict increased demand for content in particular location or to estimate the fastest route to deliver the content. Its structure consists of 3 layers:
- Cloud Controller - exercises control over nodes in order to ensure that content is distributed in the most secure and efficient way.
- Master Node - initializes content processing and provides feedback to the Cloud Controller.
- Worker Node - caches and delivers content to the user.
How does the Content Scaling work?
Once an user enters a website with CSL support, a content request is sent to the nearest Master Node, selected by Cloud Controller. Then Master Node checks if the content is available on any of the controlled Worker Nodes. If so, user starts to download data from NOIA network. Otherwise, the content is downloaded in the conventional way. Thanks to this, NOIA will never negatively affect the performance of websites.
Competitors
There are already several CDN solutions on the market, but as discussed in the previous paragraphs, their technologies are insufficient and too expensive, especially for the growing content market. NOIA as a decentralized solution, clearly stands out.
NOIA Testnet
As the NOIA Testnet is already live, you can set up the Worker Node on your device and contribute to making internet better place!
In my opinion, running the NOIA Node is really attractive. You can earn passively 200 NOIA Tokens per week (according to ICOs.best 1 Token is currently worth 0.056 USD, which results in reward of about 11 USD) and contribute to achieving a beautiful vision of internet. Moreover, running a Node does not charge you with any negative consequences - NOIA utilize only unused resources of you computer. I am currently in the process of setting up my own Node and strongly encourage you to do the same!
Here you can find instructions on how to participate in NOIA Testnet
In order to qualify to the airdrop and start receiving a reward of 200 NOIA Tokens every week, you will have to complete KYC application, as NOIA needs your personal details to meet the regulations. However, if you do not want to share them, NOIA is going to open up a possibility to run the Node without KYC application and participation in the airdrop.
Summary
NOIA seems to be one of these projects which aims to revolutionize its industry. The team do not want just to extend their business but has an innovative vision which can change the internet known to us. Solutions of the already existing CDN providers are inefficient, obsolete and expensive. Therefore, I strongly believe that NOIA combined with Blockchain technology may become a serious game changer.
NOIA creates a win-win situation. Websites and services are provided with a powerful tool to distribute their content, while users with underutilized bandwidth resources can acquire weekly rewards and contribute to making internet a better place. If you want to become a part of this enterprise, I encourage to set up your own Node today!
NOIA introductory video
NOIA explanatory video
More information & social media
- NOIA Website
- NOIA White paper
- NOIA Technical paper
- NOIA Telegram
- NOIA Medium
- NOIA Reddit
- NOIA Twitter
- NOIA YouTube
- NOIA Facebook
