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I'm the founder of ZeroTier and just saw this article. I've spoken to Bob a few times in the past and while we appreciate the mention there wasn't any coordinat
by api 9y ago
I'm the founder of ZeroTier and just saw this article. I've spoken to Bob a few times in the past and while we appreciate the mention there wasn't any coordination. (We'd have timed it to not be right before a holiday. :)
I think what he's arguing is that fully encrypted p2p overlay networks would be the next step beyond privacy VPNs, and would be more powerful. Basically if we "encrypt all the things" then ISPs will only see opaque encrypted traffic and will be unable to effectively implement really fine-grained traffic prioritization/de-prioritization.
What he suggests would be possible. People and services could join public ZeroTier networks and you'd have this flat "meta-Internet" where everything was encrypted and all traffic looked the same.
I don't think this is a silver bullet. ISPs can still make deals with big players like Netflix, Google, Facebook, etc. and offer them at a higher speed on the "clearnet." Other traffic would be relegated to the "other" category that would be slow-laned on non-premium plans. This applies to more conventional privacy VPNs and anything else just as much as it applies to ZeroTier.
- pjc50 9y agoI think there's a fundamental technical problem here. ISPs theoretically provide you with the shortest, least congested route. Overlay networks either go straight to the same destination (subject to the same throttling), or bounce off some other host for privacy laundering. Then you're dependent on that host to have a good connection to Netflix instead. It's always going to be worse than going direct.
- api 9y agoMostly agreed. The only real hope is to more substantially disrupt the ISP market.
- ovrdrv3 9y agoCompletely unrelated: EPIC username!
- api 9y agoIt's actually my initials: Adam Paul Ierymenko First and last initials are AI.
- jack9 9y ago> then ISPs will only see opaque encrypted traffic and will be unable to effectively implement really fine-grained traffic prioritization/de-prioritization Is there any doubt that no-tolerance of encrypted traffic will be baked into their ToS with proprietary encryption becoming the standard between the bundled endpoints?
- sporkologist 9y ago> Basically if we "encrypt all the things" then ISPs will only see opaque encrypted traffic and will be unable to effectively implement really fine-grained traffic prioritization/de-prioritization. Wouldn't the ISP's default in that case be to de-prioritize all opaque encrypted traffic?