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The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

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131–140 of 143 posts

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#131
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if you want to get rid of BGP then it probably doesn't make sense to talk about ASNs since BGP is a way to connect ASNs... That being said, it does seem very pie-in-the-sky to imagine the entire global internet using decentralized routing without some sort of backbone infra that is at least moderately centralized. There is just too much data. I could imagine mesh networks being more feasible if we were still liv…

Maybe it is too much data for devices that have to share a channel. But lasers (think: old TV remotes using infrared) do not have to share channels with each other, and can be very high-bandwidth and more difficult to snoop on indeed. Mirrors could even be used for relaying, to save lots of compute. Like fiber cables piercing through the air itself!

You are talking nonsense.

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people interested in the Great Firewall wrote up weirdness they saw with one particular prototype of eSNI years back. A game of Telephone later this became nonsense like "China blocks TLS 1.3" but actually if you do that what you get isn't web sites stripped of protection but connection errors. Which is indeed what happens for some sites from the other side of the Great Firewall, but we just say China blocks tho…

> A game of Telephone Funny enough the children's "telephone game" is, in many Commonwealth countries, apparently called "Chinese whispers," at least according to my Londoner colleagues.

Yes, I’m British and when American friends first used the word “Telephone” in conversation I was very confused.

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#134
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

States can, and do, maintain the power to maintain or close public roads. In fact, they do so daily at border checkpoints, and do so locally in cases like local natural disaster risk (e.g. hurricane or wildfire evacuation).

Or in the case of local social disaster risk, like, say, riots, protests, or public gatherings.

It doesn’t even need to be a disaster.

A parade or block party closure is a closure of a public road, so is closing the street and digging a tunnel.

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#135
post #116
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it doesn't end there... they block the CDN that implements this feature, and then the CDN's customers--who probably didn't care much about the benefits this gives to some of their users but are now losing access to some large customer base--start complaining and migrating off the CDN, which results in the CDN pulling back on the feature. And we know this is what will happen as this is effectively what happened wi…

Yup it's a cat and mouse game, and how much money these dictators represent. Thankfully? in the case of Iran, many customers do not want to interact with Iran because of US export regulations, so if it breaks that, all the better ironically enough.

Iran, definitely. I don't think many companies would cry over the loss of Iran due to blocking their CDN.

China, on the other hand... That's where it starts getting interesting. There's already been several prominent examples of companies self-censoring to appease the Chinese government.

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#136
post #126

The only real solution long-term is completely peer-to-peer ad-hoc networking that doesn't depend on BGP. A few projects are in similar territory but none I've seen are working at the layer of bypassing BGP. Many are just acting as an overlay; which works to an extent. https://github.com/yggdrasil-network/yggdrasil-go It's probably begging for a different model of the "internet" and where data lives. My requirements:…

AirDrop? This is maybe the largest deployed peer-to-peer solution. Sad that it is iOS only.

https://github.com/seemoo-lab/opendrop exists

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the basis of their entire project [1] was given to them as the output of an obscure DARPA project ostensibly aimed at securing democracy in the world. It's not written into a contract, just a sorta "moral obligation" to, you know... not shit on the values of the people who put you where you are. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet

I agree that it's their job, I don't agree that they've adopted a policy of isolation, but whatever. It's just not a good way to start a tech article. The author mentioned some of the blocking methods, so that's cool.

In aggregate, you will find that the population of Silicon Valley, and wealthy locations in general, under-enlist, tend to vote against military appropriations, and if they do vote for increased military appropriations, they tend to vote for larger non-lethal military capabilities (e.g. they favor military healthcare and retirement benefits). A lot of this is obvious blue-state voting. For the enlistment rate, the easiest one to point to is Texas vs California. Texas accounts for 12.1% of Army recruitment from a population of 29M, while California accounts for 9.9% of Army recruitment from a population of 39M. New York is even lower with 4.6% from a population of 19M. By comparison, North Carolina has 4.7% population on a population of 10.5M.

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#138
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One is used as punishment to correct behavior, one as control. [edit] This is the same way that if I go out and throw someone into my basement it's 'kidnapping' but when the police do it to me, it's an arrest. Jokingly this comment has the same vibes. [1] [1] https://twitter.com/dril/status/473265809079693312?s=20&t=gD...

>to correct behavior this is literally trying to control, just on a different level.

Not all control is bad. Some state actors should be controlled. It is my opinion that the Iranian regime is one of them.

I was probably a little un-clear in my response though, I meant in one case the goal of the administration was to control and repress the people in direct opposition to my values and that of many others. In the other case, the goal is to control the administration and erode their ability to do so.

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it is too much data for devices that have to share a channel. But lasers (think: old TV remotes using infrared) do not have to share channels with each other, and can be very high-bandwidth and more difficult to snoop on indeed. Mirrors could even be used for relaying, to save lots of compute. Like fiber cables piercing through the air itself!

You are talking nonsense.

I was speculating that the notion of a laser-based mesh network could deserve more attention, if it is economically viable. That seems like a better choice than something like WiFi, because you do not have to share a channel with huge amounts of other devices.

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are talking nonsense.

I was speculating that the notion of a laser-based mesh network could deserve more attention, if it is economically viable. That seems like a better choice than something like WiFi, because you do not have to share a channel with huge amounts of other devices.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-space_optical_communicati...

It is already a thing but not common due to many limitations, mainly very short useful range.

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