Pingfs: A filesystem where data is stored as ICMP Echo packets (2016)
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Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderThis is exactly what I needed - not a lot of people are doing eventually inconsistent databases yet. If theres a network partition, shits probably fucked anyways so its best to throw away all your data. Unfortunately the metadata (list of files) is stored in memory, not network. Not quite as unreliable as I would like.
In the pre-smtp days, email links were over UUCP, which was often relayed via dial up lines which connected intermittently, on a schedule (e.g. every hour). You also specified not just the destination, but also the route for the email to take, via a 'bang path': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUCP#Bang_path Add in the situation of disk quotas for university students, but not email quotas, and you get the means, motive and opportunity for people to use the email spools of a mail servers…
It's humbling to know that the RAM of computers like ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 would fit in a single IP packet. It took minutes to load that "paket" from cassette tape.
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 2
- Total points
- 304
- Total comments
- 111
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-07-07 | Pingfs – a filesystem where the data is stored only ICMP Echo packetsFirst breakout | pykello | 100 | 41 |
| 2016-12-20 | Pingfs – store your data in ICMP packages (Ping as a Storage) | rbanffy | 1 | 0 |
| 2017-10-24 | Pingfs: A filesystem where data is stored as ICMP Echo packets (2016)Best thread | signa11 | 119 | 44 |
| 2019-05-15 | PingFS: Stores your data in ICMP ping packets | robertheadley | 1 | 0 |
| 2019-07-15 | PingFS: Store your data in ping packets | vincent_s | 2 | 0 |
| 2025-05-06 | pingfs: A filesystem where data is stored in ICMP Echo packets | voxadam | 3 | 0 |
| 2025-12-14 | Pingfs: Stores your data in ICMP ping packets (2020)Latest 20+ point return | linkdd | 78 | 26 |