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Berty: Peer-to-peer messaging app that works with or without internet access
111–118 of 118 posts
Re: Berty: Peer-to-peer messaging app that works with or without internet access
#112This brings up a question I still haven't gotten a clear answer to: why isn't Signal peer-to-peer like this? What is it about p2p that made it not doable, rather than Signal's current setup where every message goes through a centralized server before reaching the recipient? Would appreciate any insight.
> What is it about p2p that made it not doable Well, everything? Nothing about mobile devices is suited for p2p. Mobile devices are the exact opposite of what you want for p2p to function smoothly. The devices are always going offline, they move around and acquire new IP addresses, they can't run things in the background without significant battery drain. And probably most important: NAT and routing issues. This isn'…
Not really. A DHTs can perform this without a centralized discovery service. Bit torrent for instance uses this, and clients can trade peers without being on the DHT.
Additionally there's so many bittorrent clients that there's millions of machines in the DHT and even a brute force search of IPv4 is't going to take long to find one of the millions, which will happily give you dozens of other peers.
So sure many clients include a bootstrap server for the DHT, but that's needed once and you can skip that if you are willing scan a few 1000 hosts for a client.
I've pondered writing a DHT based client for signal like functionality (sync messages, async messages, and resistance to traffic analysis), I don't see any technical blockers. I get why signal is centralized and does have some attractive features that would be hard to match with a p2p setup. In particular quick startups, low message latency, and battery/network efficiency. With that said I think a p2p e2e chat client is quite feasible.
What would make it MUCH more feasible is people started buying wallwart arm systems (more common years ago), or raspberry Pis and ran a p2p client as a service so that clients in the home could leverage the service for email, chat, file transfers, etc.
Re: Berty: Peer-to-peer messaging app that works with or without internet access
#113I know people like harking on about phone number or email requirements, but how am I supposed to find my friends? Do I have to send them a message over Signal to tell them the name I picked on another app?
Something like that. That's the big reason Moxie chose to use phone numbers. Piggyback off the pre existing social network from people's contact lists. It's great for viral uptake, even if it's not as privacy preserving as a (way way) less usable "random identifier I chose" messenger like, say, Wickr. It's not a surprise that the two big names in all the discussion about WhatApp's Privacy Policy update and mass exodu…
Not just that though, it makes it much more expensive to say create 1M signal clients to try to spam users, deceiver users, or create a DoS. Phone numbers/sims create a limit on the feasible number of accounts an individual (or even a company) could control.
Re: Berty: Peer-to-peer messaging app that works with or without internet access
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'd almost argue that if someone were to make the simplest of all SDR's that could turn ordinary WiFi cards and devices into SDR SDR became wildly popular (well, relatively, amongst geeks) when someone worked out a ~$10 usb dtv tuner could be used easily as an SDR receiver . There are very few (but not zero) rules around recieving radio signals. Once you start transmitting though, things get way moire complicated v…
First of all, a lot of good info, so I appreciate that! I'm not going down this route right now (too many other priorities), but I like to think strategically about this subject, as I do about many others. >"SDR became wildly popular (well, relatively, amongst geeks) when someone worked out a ~$10 usb dtv tuner could be used easily as an SDR receiver." Strangely, I never heard about this, but I'd be interested to lea…
> You see, to quote William Shakespeare's "Hamlet":
>"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Sorry, but a can’t help but think from your wordsalad here that you understand barely more about regulatory aspects of radio bandwidth use than Shakespeare did... I can’t even work out where to start to guide you down a path where your “Understanding of both Law and Radio” might start to intersect with reality in 2021 society. So I’m not even going to try.
One hint I will throw you about SDR - use the keyword “RTL SDR”, you’ll find many simple and amazing projects using USB tv tuner sticks available for ~$10 repurposed as Software Defined Radio receivers. These days they are used for everything from global flight tracking like Flightradar24 up to some amazing things like passive radar tracking planes via reflections from powerful radio station transmitters.
Re: Berty: Peer-to-peer messaging app that works with or without internet access
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
First of all, a lot of good info, so I appreciate that! I'm not going down this route right now (too many other priorities), but I like to think strategically about this subject, as I do about many others. >"SDR became wildly popular (well, relatively, amongst geeks) when someone worked out a ~$10 usb dtv tuner could be used easily as an SDR receiver." Strangely, I never heard about this, but I'd be interested to lea…
> You see, to quote William Shakespeare's "Hamlet": >"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Sorry, but a can’t help but think from your wordsalad here that you understand barely more about regulatory aspects of radio bandwidth use than Shakespeare did... I can’t even work out where to start to guide you down a path where your “Understanding of both Law and Radio”…
Did I not say "I don't mean to offend you by saying that" in my message?
?
Two Questions:
1) What is the first principle of Law? Why does it exist?
2) What is the first principle of Radio? How does it exist?
?
Also, I might suggest that labeling others, while highly effective at shutting down debate (this technique is used by TV news anchors -- label opponents, then offer a quick quip as to what the majority in society would disagree with most with the label previously given, then feel good about having done so), is also equal-and-oppositely highly damaging to one's own continuing education, the education which, if it were continued with an open mind and without such actions -- would make a person highly (and I mean highly) effective over time, such that whatever they would seek in life, they would an uncannily high probability to attain...
That is the function of angles and possibilities, angles and possibilities not explored, angles and possibilities which are shut off if/when someone tries to shut down "opponents", by whatever methods (labeling, smears, painting them with a broad brush, etc., etc.)
But, for the sake of not provoking a debate, you want me to say that "I'm an idiot"?
Fine, "I'm an idiot."
You want me to say that I understand barely more about regulatory aspects of radio bandwidth use than Shakespeare did?
Fine, "I understand barely more about regulatory aspects of radio bandwidth use than Shakespeare did."
But here's the thing.
You see, I can say those things because I'm not afraid of the repercussions of saying those things (there are none for me. )
I don't believe them for an instant, however.
Two Questions:
1) What is the first principle of Law? Why does it exist?
2) What is the first principle of Radio? How does it exist?
Re: Berty: Peer-to-peer messaging app that works with or without internet access
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You see, to quote William Shakespeare's "Hamlet": >"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Sorry, but a can’t help but think from your wordsalad here that you understand barely more about regulatory aspects of radio bandwidth use than Shakespeare did... I can’t even work out where to start to guide you down a path where your “Understanding of both Law and Radio”…
Did I not say "I don't mean to offend you by saying that" in my message? ? Two Questions: 1) What is the first principle of Law? Why does it exist? 2) What is the first principle of Radio? How does it exist? ? Also, I might suggest that labeling others, while highly effective at shutting down debate (this technique is used by TV news anchors -- label opponents, then offer a quick quip as to what the majority in socie…
Addendum:
Everything that the FCC (and its counterparts in foreign countries) regulate -- are waves that are Hertzian in nature.
These types of waves follow the Inverse-square Law:(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law), that is, they drop off inversely proportional to the square of distance.
It's a good thing that they do, too, because otherwise everyone's radio transmitter of whatever type (cell phone, garage door opener, TV remote, Wi-Fi, etc.), would interfere with everyone else's -- and this doesn't happen.
Nature, via the Inverse-square Law -- prevents this for the most part...
But, while Hertzian waves are used by most of the devices we know and love, in Physics, there are also Non-Hertzian waves (scalar, transverse, longitudinal, etc.).
These require special equipment and engineering to both create and detect (compare to Gravitational Waves, LIGO, etc.), and they might be highly directional in nature (that is, if you're not in a very tight path, you cannot detect them, but that's a good thing, because it also means that they don't interfere with all of the radio devices that we know and love!)
You see, there is nothing in Physics that (with the right engineering) that prevents the transmission or reception of information on non-Hertzian waves, on any number of mediums.
Sunlight, the earth's magnetic field, radiation from space, and many other mediums -- could in theory be used to send and receive information... even Gravity itself could be, in theory, if it is a wave, and if it were properly understood...
Also, Quantum Communication -- the idea that you take a crystal (or some other medium), and split it in half, and (again, with the right engineering) now can communicate over large distances without an apparent medium between them -- this idea is Non-Hertzian in nature.
ESP, if it exists -- is Non-Hertzian in nature.
Non-Hertzian communications are the future (basically it's Star Trek technology).
Hertzian (which the FCC and its counterparts in foreign countries regulate and can regulate) is the present-day -- and the past.
In other words, a prediction: In the future -- there will be a disruption of Internet scale in Communications -- when Non-Hertzian communications technologies become dominant...
Also, with respect to Law -- the root of all Law (all human Law) is human agreement -- which is also the root of all man-made contracts.
Congress (or any other governing body) cannot change Natural Law -- that is, no act of human agreement will change the nature of Gravity, nor any of the Laws (pure laws, natural laws) that govern the physical universe...
Or perhaps as Star Trek's Scotty would so eloquently say:
"Ye cannot change the laws of physics!"
Re: Berty: Peer-to-peer messaging app that works with or without internet access
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What is it about p2p that made it not doable Well, everything? Nothing about mobile devices is suited for p2p. Mobile devices are the exact opposite of what you want for p2p to function smoothly. The devices are always going offline, they move around and acquire new IP addresses, they can't run things in the background without significant battery drain. And probably most important: NAT and routing issues. This isn'…
Not really. A DHTs can perform this without a centralized discovery service. Bit torrent for instance uses this, and clients can trade peers without being on the DHT. Additionally there's so many bittorrent clients that there's millions of machines in the DHT and even a brute force search of IPv4 is't going to take long to find one of the millions, which will happily give you dozens of other peers. So sure many clien…
I'm very intrigued by these "wallwart arm systems" that you mentioned. Where can I read up on this?
Re: Berty: Peer-to-peer messaging app that works with or without internet access
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really. A DHTs can perform this without a centralized discovery service. Bit torrent for instance uses this, and clients can trade peers without being on the DHT. Additionally there's so many bittorrent clients that there's millions of machines in the DHT and even a brute force search of IPv4 is't going to take long to find one of the millions, which will happily give you dozens of other peers. So sure many clien…
I'm very intrigued by these "wallwart arm systems" that you mentioned. Where can I read up on this?
None are current AFAIK. I do think that the downsides of P2P could be largely offset by assuming a raspberry Pi or equivalent small system to offset the battery, bandwidth, and CPU penalties that are so hard to justify on Mobile.
So they are of historical interest only, but if you want to did up the history I'll give you some search terms. Marvell had a $99 reference platform called the SheevaPlug CloudEngine had a Pogoplug, CTera had a CloudPLug, Seagate DockStar, GuruPlug, DreamPlug, PylonPlug, sipJack, GeNiJack, etc. etc. etc.
They all had a GHz or so CPU, GigE, 512MB ram, etc.