Demystifying Dedicated IPFS Gateways

The world of decentralized data storage has seen a tremendous shift in recent years, thanks to innovations like the Interplanetary File System (IPFS). One essential component of the IPFS ecosystem is the Dedicated Gateway. Think proper infrastructure that allows you to scale your project without limitations. In this blog, we’ll give you a quick overview of what Pinata’s Dedicated Gateways are, why you should utilize them, and how you can implement Access Controls alongside them.

What Is a Dedicated IPFS Gateway?

A Dedicated Gateway is a powerful tool that facilitates seamless access to content pinned to the IPFS network. Unlike public gateways, Dedicated Gateways are initially set up with a default restriction to ONLY serve content pinned on your Pinata account.  This is important because without it, your gateway could be open to abuse, meaning bad actors or freeloaders could use it to serve content that you didn’t want served. When a new user is signing up for a Pinata account, they’ll immediately gain access to a Dedicated Gateway. These gateways offer faster, more reliable access to content, making them an ideal choice for high-traffic use cases (ex: Marketplaces). Dedicated Gateways can also be personalized to align with your company branding, offering URLs that resonate with your brand identity.

Why You Should Use Dedicated Gateways

Enhanced reliability and performance

Dedicated IPFS gateways provide users with enhanced reliability and consistent performance. When you rely on public gateways, you are subject to potential downtime or slowdowns caused by high traffic loads. With a Dedicated Gateway, you have more control over the infrastructure, ensuring that your data remains accessible when you need it most.

      This is the loading speed of an image using a public gateway      The same image loading faster using a dedicated gateway

Customization and branding

Dedicated Gateways offer the opportunity for customization and branding. With Pinata's Dedicated Gateways, you can tailor the gateway to align with your brand identity. This not only adds a professional touch to your data storage and sharing, but also enhances your brand recognition. For example, without a custom domain, your gateway looks something like bubbling-ether-23.mypinata.cloud/ipfs/abc. With a custom domain, your gateway URL can now reflect your brand by looking something like yourbrandname.mypinata.cloud.

Access controls

Access control is a crucial aspect of using Dedicated IPFS gateways. Traditional Dedicated Gateways will retrieve content you’ve pinned through your Pinata account, where a Dedicated Gateway with Access Controls will be able to load content on the broader IPFS network as long as it meets a set criteria (more on this below). Pinata provides comprehensive access control features, allowing you to define who can access your data and under what conditions.

Gateway Access Controls: Your Data, Your Rules

Access controls are a core feature of Pinata's Dedicated IPFS gateways. Our access controls empower you to define precise rules and permissions for your stored content. Traditional Dedicated Gateways continue to be restricted in that they will only serve content that the owner has pinned through their Pinata account. However with Access Controls, if you want to serve content from the wider IPFS network, you are able to add at least one security setting. Access Tokens, IP Address Restrictions, and Host Origin Restrictions are the three ways you’re able to restrict your gateway.  In our documentation, you'll find detailed guidance on setting up access control for your data on Pinata's dedicated IPFS gateways.

Dedicated IPFS gateways represent a significant leap forward in reliability, security, and control. Whether you're a developer or business seeking a robust solution for IPFS content delivery, Pinata’s Dedicated Gateways are designed to meet your needs. Elevate your content storage experience, enhance security, and embrace the future of decentralized data storage. Explore Pinata's offerings and get started today. With Pinata, your data is not just secure—it's empowered.

Happy pinning!

‍