The Darknet Project: netroots activists dream of global mesh network
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Re: The Darknet Project: netroots activists dream of global mesh network
#2"The US State Department seems to view decentralized darknets as an important area of research for empowering free expression abroad."
(my emphasis). Depressing!
Re: The Darknet Project: netroots activists dream of global mesh network
#3I can't help but think that projects to overlay a darknet on our existing Internet infrastructure are several orders of magnitude more likely to succeed.
Re: The Darknet Project: netroots activists dream of global mesh network
#4I can't help but think that projects to overlay a darknet on our existing Internet infrastructure are several orders of magnitude more likely to succeed.
Overlaying on existing infrastructure is a faster way to get up and running, but ultimately a darknet that depends on another network is vulnerable to that network's centralized 'off' button.
Re: The Darknet Project: netroots activists dream of global mesh network
#5"The US State Department seems to view decentralized darknets as an important area of research for empowering free expression abroad ." (my emphasis). Depressing!
Regardless of their intended audience the fact that they're interested is the important thing. If it's good it'll make it's way around the world.
Re: The Darknet Project: netroots activists dream of global mesh network
#6I can't help but think that projects to overlay a darknet on our existing Internet infrastructure are several orders of magnitude more likely to succeed.
Overlaying on existing infrastructure is a faster way to get up and running, but ultimately a darknet that depends on another network is vulnerable to that network's centralized 'off' button.
See, that's what I didn't get about the article: DARPA intended the Internet to be built against single points of failure.
Where is the Internet's 'off button'? Sure, there are exchanges and backbones that are more important than others (e.g. LINX in London), but it takes sustained and continuous efforts by a government to even come close to filtering/censoring the Internet effectively.
Re: The Darknet Project: netroots activists dream of global mesh network
#7I can't help but think that projects to overlay a darknet on our existing Internet infrastructure are several orders of magnitude more likely to succeed.
Overlaying on existing infrastructure is a faster way to get up and running, but ultimately a darknet that depends on another network is vulnerable to that network's centralized 'off' button.
This is true. I think it's the only practical approach given current technology though.
When somebody comes up with a £50 home wifi access point that has a range of a mile or more inside an urban environment, that is when we'll get a proper darknet.
Re: The Darknet Project: netroots activists dream of global mesh network
#8After reading the article and skimming some posts on their subreddit, I think the idea generally concerns the capabilities of consumer electronics to 'replicate' the Internet in a completely decentralized fashion. By doing so, there's no central authority managing your packets, and if you want to visit a particular node (i.e., to visit a web site), the problem becomes analogous to the stochastic shortest path problem, which is NP-complete. So, wouldn't this system require P = NP for it to have any viability at all when factoring in the effects of latency and downtime?
Re: The Darknet Project: netroots activists dream of global mesh network
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Overlaying on existing infrastructure is a faster way to get up and running, but ultimately a darknet that depends on another network is vulnerable to that network's centralized 'off' button.
See, that's what I didn't get about the article: DARPA intended the Internet to be built against single points of failure. Where is the Internet's 'off button'? Sure, there are exchanges and backbones that are more important than others (e.g. LINX in London), but it takes sustained and continuous efforts by a government to even come close to filtering/censoring the Internet effectively.
What people generally say is that the net was designed to be robust against things like a nuclear strike taking out some part of the network.
That is very different from saying that it can't be turned off, by a government with the power to legally compel infrastructure operators to do things.
I'd say that the US government, if it wanted to, could turn off the Internet, for most of its citizens, over the course of a few days.
What would stop this happening is the legal framework, and the business and societal infrastructure that depends on the Internet functioning; but not some technological property of the Internet.
The ability to knock domains out, at the DNS level, was demonstrated not too long ago - e.g. http://torrentfreak.com/feds-seize-pokerstars-full-tilt-poke...
Theres this meme out there that the Internet cant be turned off, because its designed in a 'decentralised' manner, and its just not true, in pragmatic terms.
Re: The Darknet Project: netroots activists dream of global mesh network
#10[deleted]