Related: Are there any standards, APIs, best practices for p2p peer discovery? I found this https://github.com/status-im/bigbrother-specs/blob/master/da... (mentions Gossip and Kademlia) but it is several years old and doesn't contain much info on peer discovery.
Pretty much any bittorrent library implements peer discovery through DHT (global database of who is interested in what hash), PEX (Peer exchange, ie if you and a peer are interested in the same content you can both exchanges other peers each side is connected to)
It’s not really more work; it’s just a matter of enabling the ‘client isolation’ setting on the wireless AP. For example, see Cisco’s Meraki documentation: https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Firewall_and_Traffic_Sha... > With Client Isolation enabled, clients will only be able to communicate with the default gateway and will not be able to communicate with any other devices on the same VLAN (or broadcast domain). In…
But you can't use Briar and the like with this Client Isolation, can you?
Isn't that their point? The only reason it worked on a cruise ship connected to the WiFi was because local devices could talk to eachother and were not isolated.
My wife and I use Briar for household communication because of subsidiarity rather than any direct privacy concerns. Out of all the messenger projects that we've tried, Briar actually works for local communication. It's actually instant messaging without any client hiccups or latency (looking at you, Signal). We've tried a ton of other options, but we keep ending up back at Briar. There are points of UX friction in t…
> The only issue that stops us from using DeltaChat (or email in general) is that we both have email hosting in Europe while we live in the US, so neither of us, being frugal in principal, wants to send information to Europe and back in order to tell the person 100 ft away to come help bring in the groceries.
The Briar page seems to suggest messages are routed through Tor:
> Briar uses the Tor network to prevent eavesdroppers from learning which users are talking to each other.
I am waiting for Matrix's P2P support, once its out, its going to crush everything else. Supposedly its should come out with the improved mobile apps too, which are sorely needed.
I am too, but the Matrix implementation feels quite complex with many moving parts, when apps like Briar, Berty, or keet.io [0] show up and look more straightforward to use. I don't know if that will be its downfall or ultimately actually make it more robust, but I'm rooting for it.
As convenient as it'd be for one implementation to crush everything else and become better because of it, I think different choices are good in terms of having alternatives and competing for features and niches.
Check out https://berty.tech for direct off network communications when you do not have internet.
It uses only BLE. What's the point when Briar is a better alternative?
I think it supports both. There’s options for off grid that includes Bluetooth and multipeer connectivity, and options for multicast dns and relay servers. As for the why: it supports Android and iOS so if you don’t have an Android device, Briar is basically out.
> It's actually instant messaging without any client hiccups or latency (looking at you, Signal). This is almost certainly poor wifi / cell coverage, not Signal having "hiccups" or "latency." I routinely have real-time texting conversations with friends and I can see the messages are "seen" almost instantaneously, half-way across the US. I've also never had an issue with voice chat. It's been flawless, and very high…
> available on iOS too Ah yes, the two operating systems: Android + iOS. You can't have an account without registering a primary device on one of those OSs. No KaiOS, no Linux phones, no desktop machines, no web-only options. I'm mad about these mobile-duopoly-app-first services because you can't participate in alternative lifestyles when it Cowes to phone usage.
> available on iOS too Ah yes, the two operating systems: Android + iOS. You can't have an account without registering a primary device on one of those OSs. No KaiOS, no Linux phones, no desktop machines, no web-only options. I'm mad about these mobile-duopoly-app-first services because you can't participate in alternative lifestyles when it Cowes to phone usage.
Amen to this. I bank with Starling and having decided to minimise my phone usage am having to move away from them. Likewise a variety of other services.
Honestly my banking situation + Signal is the biggest barriers to me switching. I pushed pretty hard to get friends and family to successfully switch off Messenger, LINE, and SMS for Signal (and now they're confused why the need a separate messaging app for SMS--thanks Moxie). I suppose I could write my own front-end wrapper around the bank, but they ain't paying me for that and would likely shut it down as insecure if they found out (even though there's no responsive design, they don't allow you to copy-paste or right-click, or use commas and other punctuation because the web system is built with TIS encoding I think, and they log you out with a meta refresh after 15 or 20 minutes of activity with no pop-up to save your work (in case you were trying to reformat another complaint message without puncuation in their messaging system), and I saw code checking for IE4 and Netscape Navigator 4).
My wife and I use Briar for household communication because of subsidiarity rather than any direct privacy concerns. Out of all the messenger projects that we've tried, Briar actually works for local communication. It's actually instant messaging without any client hiccups or latency (looking at you, Signal). We've tried a ton of other options, but we keep ending up back at Briar. There are points of UX friction in t…
Seems like Briar might be good for messaging to young kids. I could give them an old phone without a sim card, and run Briar on it.
