HACKER Q&A
📣 fho

What can be done to circumvent the central server?


The internet was supposed to be decentralized. But these days this is just not the case anymore.

I just came out of a [very popular video chat software] meeting that started out in [decentralized video software]. [very popular video chat software] offered a superior video quality which I attribute to the possibility to organize datastreams centrally and distribute data from a high bandwidth central instance.

I realize that this is a very general question, but is there anything that can be done about this?

  👤 mikst Accepted Answer ✓
The Internet is a network of networks. Among those networks there isn't any central network. That is what "decentralized" is supposed to mean. And while some networks are more prominent then the others the Internet _is_ decentralized.

Services that work atop the Internet are what they choose to be. For one centralized services are easier to code and easier to monetize, so not very surprisingly more people choose to build centralized services.