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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

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 https://github.com/yggdrasil-network/yggdrasil-go It's probably begging for a different model of the "internet" and where data lives. My requirements: 1. Offline-first applications that sync via a pub/sub DHT of trusted peers. More details here but basically allows bypassing BGP. 2. Trusted peers are routable via a determinstic pathing algoritm without exposing the recipient. (content addressable everything). 3. Automatically distribute storage and compute on all local devices a user has and or needs (it's so dumb and wasteful that I only use one computer at a time when I have hundreds at my home at different levels of compute from thermostat to fridge to laptop to desktop). I've thought about this for a long time and planned many requirements out. I was very committed to working on it but then I lost motivation because I don't get along with most humans today and where the world seems to be going. It also sucks to have people think your ideas are crazy. Oh well.

drummer 4y ago
https://quantumgate.org/ https://quantumgate.org/
icedchai 4y ago
How exactly are you going to "bypass BGP" on the global Internet? Reaching your trusted peers depends on routing, which means BGP (at least for anything outside of your ASN.)
- zwkrt 4y ago
  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 living in an era of html websites and RSS feeds.
  - pyinstallwoes 4y ago
    All data should only exist within the light cone that it is used within. That means a lot of data is improperly used today in terms of where and how it is moved. You need a lot less information "over the wire" when it doesn't move as far, and when you can speculate and predict what to render (ML/AI). What matters is the package and space more than anything. Go figure. That's also why "massively distributed compute/swarm computation" makes sense in this mesh like model you hint at. The future is strictly local data unless we totally escape time dialation over large distances, whether or not we bypass speed of light limits. The future is strictly a simulation if we are a multi-galaxy species, let alone spread across the galaxy. The only way to have a real-time conversation is to simulate the person/ego. The local copies would be as real/eventually consistent as possible over time.
  - sweetbitter 4y ago
    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!
    - HyperSane 4y ago
      You are talking nonsense.
      - sweetbitter 4y ago
        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.
        HyperSane 4y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-space_optical_communication 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.
- pyinstallwoes 4y ago
  By having a determinstic way to talk based on what you want to talk about. Call it, determinitic-spontaneous-rendezvous-routing.
  - icedchai 4y ago
    Sorry, but this makes no sense to me. Can you explain this a bit more?
cookiengineer 4y ago
Most of the things you mentioned are implemented in the "Browser" that I've built. It's using multicast DNS to discover neighboring running instances and it has an offline cache first mentality, which means that e.g. download streams are shared among local peers. Global peer discovery is solved via mapping of identifiers via the reserved TLD, and via mutual TLS for identification and verification. So peers are basically pinned client certificates in your local settings. Works for most cases, had to implement a couple of breakout tunnel protocols though, so that peer discovery works failsafe when known IPs/ASNs are blocked. Relaying and scattering traffic works automatically, so that no correlation of IPs to scraped websites can be done by an MITM. Tunnel protocols are all generically implemented, DNS exfiltration, HTTPS smuggling, ICMP tunnels, and pwnat work already pretty failsafe. What's missing is UPnP support so that it behaves a little more gracefully when a router would be cooperative in nature, but after trying to implement the "specification" a bunch of times I skipped it for now. Lots of work to be done though, and had to focus on couple of other things first before I can get back to the project. The browser is part of a larger network that's trying to automate cyber threat intelligence on a peer to peer level, so clients, servers, websites and domains have a trust ratio and a history of trust to prevent misclassification of a new domain owner that e.g. defaced a website or tries to inject their malicious assets up unto previously trusted peers. [1] https://github.com/tholian-network/stealth https://github.com/tholian-network/stealth
- pyinstallwoes 4y ago
  Thanks for sharing your comment and contributing to the solution. I like what you're doing. Do you have a Discord? Is it a solo project? Working with a team or just "community pull-requests?" Curious about your trajectory.
  - cookiengineer 4y ago
    Currently we only have a public (and another private) Telegram channel where we occasionally discuss upcoming features, problems and solutions to technical problems. The Stealth browser is kind of a solo project for now. It grew out of my personal intention to build a better architecture for a more efficient web scraper + browser that doesn't waste internet bandwidth, because I have pretty crappy internet abroad. But I'd love to grow a community out of it. Before the 4chan attacks last year there were a couple of other devs that occasionally contributed to the project, but they faded slowly away with the discreditation campaigns against me/us. As the 4chan raids led to us realizing that we're better at building cyber intelligence + defense products, we also pivoted with the company to this area because of it. The threat analysis mechanisms and peer-to-peer networking parts (with trust ratio of nodes/edges/paths) are very similar in nature, so it was a good fit, technology-wise. I'd still want to build the stealth browser further and make a better project out of it (especially with the RetroKit fork which is WebKit minus the tracking APIs), but I've pivoted with the company to a different area and that's currently the primary objective. As our country is regularly attacked by a lot of cyber threats right now, we've focussed our efforts on developing the cyber defense technologies. Right now, stealth is primarily being used as a Web Scraper via it's node.js APIs by us. So it's still actively used and occasionally we'll push some features to the repository.
valeg 4y ago
AirDrop? This is maybe the largest deployed peer-to-peer solution. Sad that it is iOS only.
- mynameisvlad 4y ago
  https://github.com/seemoo-lab/opendrop https://github.com/seemoo-lab/opendrop exists

drummer 4y ago

https://quantumgate.org/ https://quantumgate.org/

icedchai 4y ago

How exactly are you going to "bypass BGP" on the global Internet? Reaching your trusted peers depends on routing, which means BGP (at least for anything outside of your ASN.)

zwkrt 4y ago
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 living in an era of html websites and RSS feeds.
- pyinstallwoes 4y ago
  All data should only exist within the light cone that it is used within. That means a lot of data is improperly used today in terms of where and how it is moved. You need a lot less information "over the wire" when it doesn't move as far, and when you can speculate and predict what to render (ML/AI). What matters is the package and space more than anything. Go figure. That's also why "massively distributed compute/swarm computation" makes sense in this mesh like model you hint at. The future is strictly local data unless we totally escape time dialation over large distances, whether or not we bypass speed of light limits. The future is strictly a simulation if we are a multi-galaxy species, let alone spread across the galaxy. The only way to have a real-time conversation is to simulate the person/ego. The local copies would be as real/eventually consistent as possible over time.
- sweetbitter 4y ago
  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!
  - HyperSane 4y ago
    You are talking nonsense.
    - sweetbitter 4y ago
      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.
      - HyperSane 4y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-space_optical_communication 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.
pyinstallwoes 4y ago
By having a determinstic way to talk based on what you want to talk about. Call it, determinitic-spontaneous-rendezvous-routing.
- icedchai 4y ago
  Sorry, but this makes no sense to me. Can you explain this a bit more?

cookiengineer 4y ago

Most of the things you mentioned are implemented in the "Browser" that I've built. It's using multicast DNS to discover neighboring running instances and it has an offline cache first mentality, which means that e.g. download streams are shared among local peers. Global peer discovery is solved via mapping of identifiers via the reserved TLD, and via mutual TLS for identification and verification. So peers are basically pinned client certificates in your local settings. Works for most cases, had to implement a couple of breakout tunnel protocols though, so that peer discovery works failsafe when known IPs/ASNs are blocked. Relaying and scattering traffic works automatically, so that no correlation of IPs to scraped websites can be done by an MITM. Tunnel protocols are all generically implemented, DNS exfiltration, HTTPS smuggling, ICMP tunnels, and pwnat work already pretty failsafe. What's missing is UPnP support so that it behaves a little more gracefully when a router would be cooperative in nature, but after trying to implement the "specification" a bunch of times I skipped it for now. Lots of work to be done though, and had to focus on couple of other things first before I can get back to the project. The browser is part of a larger network that's trying to automate cyber threat intelligence on a peer to peer level, so clients, servers, websites and domains have a trust ratio and a history of trust to prevent misclassification of a new domain owner that e.g. defaced a website or tries to inject their malicious assets up unto previously trusted peers. [1] https://github.com/tholian-network/stealth https://github.com/tholian-network/stealth

pyinstallwoes 4y ago
Thanks for sharing your comment and contributing to the solution. I like what you're doing. Do you have a Discord? Is it a solo project? Working with a team or just "community pull-requests?" Curious about your trajectory.
- cookiengineer 4y ago
  Currently we only have a public (and another private) Telegram channel where we occasionally discuss upcoming features, problems and solutions to technical problems. The Stealth browser is kind of a solo project for now. It grew out of my personal intention to build a better architecture for a more efficient web scraper + browser that doesn't waste internet bandwidth, because I have pretty crappy internet abroad. But I'd love to grow a community out of it. Before the 4chan attacks last year there were a couple of other devs that occasionally contributed to the project, but they faded slowly away with the discreditation campaigns against me/us. As the 4chan raids led to us realizing that we're better at building cyber intelligence + defense products, we also pivoted with the company to this area because of it. The threat analysis mechanisms and peer-to-peer networking parts (with trust ratio of nodes/edges/paths) are very similar in nature, so it was a good fit, technology-wise. I'd still want to build the stealth browser further and make a better project out of it (especially with the RetroKit fork which is WebKit minus the tracking APIs), but I've pivoted with the company to a different area and that's currently the primary objective. As our country is regularly attacked by a lot of cyber threats right now, we've focussed our efforts on developing the cyber defense technologies. Right now, stealth is primarily being used as a Web Scraper via it's node.js APIs by us. So it's still actively used and occasionally we'll push some features to the repository.

valeg 4y ago

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

mynameisvlad 4y ago
https://github.com/seemoo-lab/opendrop https://github.com/seemoo-lab/opendrop exists