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Open Libernet: a Bitcoin-based fully encrypted mesh networking protocol

openlibernet.org

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Re: Open Libernet: a Bitcoin-based fully encrypted mesh networking protocol

#11

Post by jokoon »

I'd be more interested in a software that hosts data in a mesh network fashion rather than talk about zombie apocalypse, SOPA/PIPA and other political craze. And why does this thing talk so much about hardware anyways ?

Maybe the goal is to get funding to make that kind of project happen, but I don't think any engineer will like to get involved into a project than explicitely express political opinions and concerns. Let the politics deal with the NSA stories so it can get solved.

If you really want to make a difference like gnutella, edonkey and bittorrent did, just be a programmer and get working. I think the only thing that matter is to make a software protocol which is interesting to use, not a meli melo of nerd-oriented awesomeness.

Re: Open Libernet: a Bitcoin-based fully encrypted mesh networking protocol

#12

Post by flibertgibit »

I love the idea of mesh networking to decentralize the net and using OTS solutions to do so. In fact, I've pushed for it on HN. But, here are a few problems:

* Before a "theory" website with cheesy blog/helloworld/contact images http://openlibernet.org/index.html#contribute, come up with a solution. The U.S. has been through several years of executive and legislative branches led on both sides by activists with good intentions and no real, thought-out workable solutions. Beyond bumper stickers of hope, you must have solutions, truly sell them, compromise on some keys points so you have enough people on board, and implement. We don't need a page telling us about a net we can't use yet.

* Bitcoin. Don't tie something completely unrelated to a networking solution.

* To make it work (really), you need points on the network that can do short and long-range. Wifi only is not enough.

Re: Open Libernet: a Bitcoin-based fully encrypted mesh networking protocol

#13

Post by dandelion_lover »

michaelt wrote: post #5

I'm no expert on mesh networks so maybe someone can tell me - how would a mesh network connect Los Angeles and Las Vegas? Or San Francisco to Salt Lake City? Given the populations on both ends, I assume you'd need more bandwidth than you could get from wifi routers with pringles can antennas. I assume the companies who own long distance fiber have to do what the government says, as they need government permission to…

For example, it may be done with the satellites, which are sent by the community. Kickstarter already helped similar projects.

Re: Open Libernet: a Bitcoin-based fully encrypted mesh networking protocol

#14

Post by higherpurpose »

jokoon wrote: post #11

I'd be more interested in a software that hosts data in a mesh network fashion rather than talk about zombie apocalypse, SOPA/PIPA and other political craze. And why does this thing talk so much about hardware anyways ? Maybe the goal is to get funding to make that kind of project happen, but I don't think any engineer will like to get involved into a project than explicitely express political opinions and concerns.…

You mean like MaidSafe? http://maidsafe.net/

As Lawrence Lessig said, "code is law". We've seen it before. Governments are usually too behind in understanding what's going on. Sometimes it helps, like with bittorent and TPB, while other times it hurts us, like with DRM being able to lock stuff that shouldn't actually be locked according to the law, but the DRM makers are basically making their own laws through code, or with NSA who spies on anyone they want no matter what laws exist, because they will just twist them to mean whatever they want in their "interpretations" of the law - and then keep those interpretations secret for "national security".

I don't think it's "political" to say you want anonymity or privacy to exist on a network, or that you don't want a network to be censored. You say "just program like the Bittorrent programmers did". Isn't that what they're doing? Bittorrent appeared because Napster and Kazaa could eventually be censored and stopped. Now we need new networks and apps that are decentralized by default.

These also bring increased security for everyone, increased privacy, and more resilience against DDOS attacks, too. So I'm not sure what you're really attacking here.

Re: Open Libernet: a Bitcoin-based fully encrypted mesh networking protocol

#15

Post by higherpurpose »

michaelt wrote: post #5

I'm no expert on mesh networks so maybe someone can tell me - how would a mesh network connect Los Angeles and Las Vegas? Or San Francisco to Salt Lake City? Given the populations on both ends, I assume you'd need more bandwidth than you could get from wifi routers with pringles can antennas. I assume the companies who own long distance fiber have to do what the government says, as they need government permission to…

I don't think we have the technology today make a "global mesh network". We need new Wi-Fi technologies and products to appear, and I think they will over the next 10 years or so. We need to get the Wi-Fi Alliance to create new Wi-Fi standards for longer ranges, too, which would make this easier. It would also help commercial companies, especially if they want to disrupt wireless telcos (such as Google and Microsoft, who have been trying to work on this, too).

But until we get to that point, we can build the technology, and have it more localized in villages, towns, or even big cities. We can use the latest Wi-Fi routers, or mobile phones, to form these meshnets now. Then perhaps we'll get Wi-fi balloons like what Google is building in Africa, although I'm not sure how resilient those would be against a government, but perhaps there will be so many of them that shutting them down would be much like shutting down the Internet.

As for intercontinental meshnets, I think DIY sattellites will become more popular in the future, and could help with this, too.

Re: Open Libernet: a Bitcoin-based fully encrypted mesh networking protocol

#16

Post by higherpurpose »

flibertgibit wrote: post #12

I love the idea of mesh networking to decentralize the net and using OTS solutions to do so. In fact, I've pushed for it on HN. But, here are a few problems: * Before a "theory" website with cheesy blog/helloworld/contact images http://openlibernet.org/index.html#contribute , come up with a solution. The U.S. has been through several years of executive and legislative branches led on both sides by activists with good…

* Bitcoin. Don't tie something completely unrelated to a networking solution.

Why not? We've seen plenty of good ideas that were inspired by Bitcoin (P2P DNS system, platform with a built-in Turing complete language, true P2P Twitter alternative for the first time, encrypted e-mail without PGP, P2P back-up solutions where you pay others to keep your data, rather than on a centralized place that can be hacked or abused, etc), and we're going to see a lot more like this.

The only problem is that unfortunately Bitcoin was never meant to be a platform on which to build other "apps". This is why all these "Bitcoin-based" or Bitcoin-inspired projects are actually heavily modified versions of Bitcoin, and not apps that work on top of Bitcoin. But I think Ethereum will solve this by creating another "Bitcoin-like" platform on which you can build anything you want, and everything is P2P by default.

http://www.ethereum.org/

Re: Open Libernet: a Bitcoin-based fully encrypted mesh networking protocol

#17

Post by jsaxton86 »

A large scale mesh network is interesting to me for a couple of reasons:

* Consumers would no longer be dependent on monopolies like Comcast for internet service (OSI layer 1)

* It is much more resistant to eavesdropping and censorship (OSI layers 2-3)

These seem like two totally different problems to me, and I'm still struggling to understand how the physical layer part can work on a large scale.

I get how they could work on a small scale. For example, you could easily set up an ad-hoc wifi network in a college dorm for, say, file sharing purposes. But in most other settings, I don't get how it could work. Most people don't even talk to their neighbors, so even if you lived in a neighborhood that had a high enough density of nodes for this to work, why would you want to share a little ad-hoc network with your neighbors?

Of course, wireless networks alone aren't going to be sufficient to build a large-scale mesh network that could disrupt existing ISPs. The latency alone makes this infeasible. So you need someone to invest in physical links, especially physical links that cover long distances. That's why the BTC part of this proposal is so great -- it provides a way to compensate these people. Of course, this is just a slightly different problem than the one we have today, but instead of being stuck with Comcast we're stuck with whoever runs these physical links.

Re: Open Libernet: a Bitcoin-based fully encrypted mesh networking protocol

#19

Post by karl_gluck »

michaelt wrote: post #5

I'm no expert on mesh networks so maybe someone can tell me - how would a mesh network connect Los Angeles and Las Vegas? Or San Francisco to Salt Lake City? Given the populations on both ends, I assume you'd need more bandwidth than you could get from wifi routers with pringles can antennas. I assume the companies who own long distance fiber have to do what the government says, as they need government permission to…

Not too long ago, the internet measured top speeds in tens of kBps. So first off, give it time. Engineers are good at solving problems like this.

Furthermore, mesh networking is a fundamentally different architecture solving a different problem than the internet. The current internet works great for high-bandwidth applications like commercial video streaming, but is terrible in terms of protecting itself from concerted attack by powerful actors. Mesh networks solve the single-point-of-failure problem.

http://gizmodo.com/5912383/how-to-destroy-the-internet

Re: Open Libernet: a Bitcoin-based fully encrypted mesh networking protocol

#20

Post by lotsofmangos »

jsaxton86 wrote: post #17

A large scale mesh network is interesting to me for a couple of reasons: * Consumers would no longer be dependent on monopolies like Comcast for internet service (OSI layer 1) * It is much more resistant to eavesdropping and censorship (OSI layers 2-3) These seem like two totally different problems to me, and I'm still struggling to understand how the physical layer part can work on a large scale. I get how they coul…

wireless networks alone aren't going to be sufficient to build a large-scale mesh network that could disrupt existing ISPs. The latency alone makes this infeasible.

I'm not so sure, your links are almost c, whereas optic fiber is substantially slower, so it depends entirely on how little processing you can get away with in the message passing code.

edit - was just thinking about this, an arm cortex runs at ~ 2,000 MIPS, which gives you just under 15 cm per instruction for radio in air. Fiber is about a third slower, so your links do not actually have to be massively long to give you quite a few cycles to play with.

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