I used a Raspberry Pi 3 to implement the IPFS node. I requested once successfully after uploading on RPI. But the file disappears after shutting down the node.
Thanks in advance!
All files added to a local IPFS node are stored in a local file store. Data stays local unless pinned by another node on the IPFS network.
If you want your file to be available 24/7, you’ll need to run your node 24/7… or utilize a pinning service.
https://docs.ipfs.io/how-to/pin-files/#pin-files-using-ipfs
That’s the default behavior for IPFS, but it’s also possible to pin your files to a remote pinning service . These third-party services give you the opportunity to pin files not to your own local node, but to nodes that they operate. You don’t need to worry about your own node’s available disk space or uptime.
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Now I see, thanks for the reply!
What is remote pinning service exactly means? A remote node like Pinata?
Assuming that my files are sized big, like 10GB, from my point of view, IPFS divides it into many pixel files, with each size of 256kB, and then stores them to multiples IPFS mining nodes. Does this pinning service work like this?
My hope is that I would like to make it distributed storage. If I misunderstood something, hope that you could identify them. Thanks.
IPFS is not “distributed storage” while it may divide your data into “many pixel files, with each size of 256kB”, but it definitely does not “then stores them to multiples IPFS mining nodes”.
When you put files into IPFS, they are divided into chunks, but those chunks are only stored on your local IPFS node. And your node publishes their existence into the DHT. When someone wants to download a file, their IPFS node queries the DHT to find the chunk and then contacts your node, either directly or via the peer-to-peer network, to retrieve the pieces. The first reference, then ALL of the pieces from from your node.
But after someone pulls the file, other IPFS nodes between them and you MAY cache SOME of the pieces for some period of time. But this is not guaranteed. Your file(s) will only be available while your node is online.
Enter the paid pinning services. When you store a file into your local IPFS node, you can submit the resulting CID to one of the services and they will pin the file with all of its chunks. This means that they will pull the chunks from your node and store them on their node, and advertise their presence so that they can be pulled from either your node or their node(s). But only as long as you continue to pay the pinner.
There are no “mining nodes” in IPFS. Only peer-to-peer nodes that provide access to the DHT (Distributed Hash Table) that allows chunks and nodes to be located. Data is not actually distributed.
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Talking about mining… incentive mechanism for pinning aka seeding content in the IPFS network was supposed to be taken care of by Filecoin but now Filecoin has evolved into own being… So at this moment, IPFS per se is left without a proper decentralized incentive mechanism, maybe someone can tackle this by, say, issuing a PIN COIN in the foreseeable future.
I’m following you on this, I too want to be able to offer customers distributed pinned (hefty) content for a fee paid via smartcontracted service. I already have a market and customers, but moving to this new paradigm is a challenge.
What do you mean by “have evolved into own being”? Looks to me that Filecoin is the incentive layer, as planned. Am I missing something?
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Check this: How does paying for data retrieval work with IPFS? · Issue #1191 · filecoin-project/specs · GitHub
This is a rather lengthy clarification or here is the most important line: “The TLDR is that IPFS isn’t currently and isn’t planning on being tied to Filecoin…”.