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The Promised LAN
- wylie39 1y agoLooks similar to dn42 https://dn42.dev/Home https://dn42.dev/Home
- trygvis 1y agodn42 is really fun tinkering with, it feels very much like connecting to the real internet. The set of internal services is growing too.
- lostmsu 1y agoHow do TPL and mentioned here dn42 compare to Yggdrasil?
- immibis 1y agoTPL: virtual permanent LAN party, closed group. DN42: build a second internet to learn how it works. Public, no privacy features. Yggdrasil: build a next generation Internet with some privacy features, and self-organization without central assignment Tor/I2P: build a completely private internet, but sacrificing speed and the ability to operate on the base layer. (Yggdrasil and DN42 and TPL can run on individual one-to-one links, but Tor and I2P assume existing any-to-any connectivity on the layer beneath, which means you already need an internet)
- ericdiao 1y agoReally want to know the rationale of choosing IPSec over Wireguard. IPSec is really tricky to get right (IMO). Maybe legacy issue?
- CursedSilicon 1y agoThey probably use L2TP with IPsec to get Layer 2 transit. Doing that over Wireguard would require Gretep or something similar
- ericdiao 1y agoOh this make sense. For LAN, one definitely want L2. Totally overlooked the objective.
- x2tyfi 1y agoWhy though? The only use case I can imagine is a legacy game which performs a server search by broadcasting/scanning the local network. And even then - most of the time these games had server browsers.
- lmm 1y agoSome classic games use IPX for multiplayer, so you can't play them over an IP VPN.
- smashed 1y agoNot sure they are using l2 transit. They are using BGP and routing nodes (backbones), recreating a mini IP (layer 3) network I think. I've used raw wireguard in a p2p fashion to interconnect LANs. I run wireguard on each segment directly inside the network routers. Just make sure all LANs are using a different subnet. A /24 is standard. Then configure all the peers and you get a fully peer to peer network. No relays. You only need one side of every peer "pair" to be reachable from the internet. I do have a small management script to help peer discovery (dynamic IPs) and key exchange, but it's not strictly required. With a dozen nodes or so, it's maintainable manually. Wireguard supports roaming natively, as long as one peer can reach the other. Very little overhead. ICMP, TCP and UDP support.
- icedchai 1y agoI have my own Wireguard mesh network between my home network and a couple of VPSes. I configured it all manually, too. I'm basically running a virtual public network and have it routing a /24 (BGP announced at the VPSes) back to my home.
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- LorenDB 1y agoMy personal choice for something like this would be Tailscale/Headscale. Runs over Wireguard and handles a ton of niceties like DNS for connected nodes automatically.
- ericdiao 1y agoYeah. I personally ran into the legacy setup issue for running vanilla Wireguard for my setup before Tailscale is a thing and have to manually manage keys, routing and DNS. But one thing Tailscale has that annoyed me is that they are using 100.64 CGNAT addresses (which is more RFC-compliant) but conflicts with one of my cloud service provider's pre-configured DNS, NTP and software mirrors setup. Using it became more or less messy for this reason.
- redn0vae 1y agoThis kind of defeats the purpose of TPL. Part of TPL is setting up your own network segment. There's a dashboard that shows who has what working. Part of the fun of TPL isn't just that your computer can talk to another computer, it's that you have your own setup configured form the ground up so your /24 can talk to other /24s on TPL. I 100% understand some people will not enjoy that and won't find it fun, and that is ok. Some people do enjoy learning new things about setting up infrastructure, and this scratches some of that itch.
- bongodongobob 1y agoI mean, this is pretty much the standard of setting up satellite offices for businesses and whatnot. Lots of people are extremely familiar with IPSec, it's not that hard.
- frollogaston 1y agoI use IPSec only because Macs, iPhones, etc have built-in support, and so does my router by coincidence. I don't want to install extra stuff.
- CursedSilicon 1y agoNo description of the games they even play? It's an interesting idea. But it sounds like one big "no girls allowed" kind of treehouse with how minimally forthcoming they are about documentation
- giantg2 1y agoSeems more like a semi-private friends-of-friends network. It wouldn't be surprising if it turned out to have skewed representations as most of these do by nature of the semi-private nature.
- cptskippy 1y agoWhat gave you that impression? > The Promised LAN is a closed, membership only network...
- giantg2 1y agoI can't tell what you are trying to add to the conversation here, or of it's just sarcasm.
- cptskippy 1y agoI was teasing you and the op because you both made hedges ("seems", "sounds") when it was very clearly stated in the very first eight words of the first sentence of the first paragraph on that site.
- xcrunner529 1y agoWhat an extremely technical friend group lol.
- redn0vae 1y agoYes, everyone is pretty technical. The author of this article (ptag) spends a decent amount of time helping the people out who aren't as well-versed in infrastructure/networking.
- xcrunner529 1y agoI am sad I don’t have 10 friends let alone so many that would be interested in such a thing. Only useful thing for my friends would maybe have been for gaming but with online these days it’s less necessary.
- PcChip 1y agoThis sounds really interesting and something I'd be into no word on how to join though
- thenoblesunfish 1y agoRead the linked manifesto. I think the idea is to inspire you to set up your own, rather than join this one.
- mjg59 1y agoThe idea is to be a space where existing social groups play, rather than a wider community - it's inherently based on a level of pre-existing trust. Writing about it is supposed to be an incentive for people to build their own little spaces where they can share weird stuff that should never be near the public internet - it's cool to have a network of thermal printers that people can submit jokes to, but it only really works if access is somewhat limited.
- pak9rabid 1y agoThe SIP "redphones" is an idea I really like. My wife managed to get a SIP IP phone from one of her buy-nothing groups that I've been meaning to setup an Asterisk server for just to mess with. Maybe stick it upstairs where my kid likes to play & let him get the experience of using a "real" phone.
- mdickers47 1y agoIt is pretty funny to be able to dial an extension from your desk phone to get the IVR of paultag's Christmas tree, but man does managing asterisk suck.
- qualeed 1y ago>As a result, membership will never be open, and we will never have enough connected LANs to deal with the technical and social problems that start to happen with scale. This is a feature, not a bug. >This is a call for you to do the same. Build your own LAN. Connect it with friends’ homes. Remember what is missing from your life, and fill it in. Use software you know how to operate and get it running. Build slowly. Build your community. Do it with joy. From https://notes.pault.ag/tpl/ https://notes.pault.ag/tpl/
- archi42 1y agoThe page contains link to a manifesto/description: https://notes.pault.ag/tpl/ https://notes.pault.ag/tpl/ I think that's a more interesting read than the linked page.
- flerchin 1y agoWow. This is the best part of it. Thanks.
- haddr 1y agoActually the manifesto is linked in the second paragraph. Reading this page and then the manifesto was good experience for me.
- jon-wood 1y agoThanks for linking that, I missed it when skimming the original link earlier. I find that quite a heart warming story which makes me want to set up something similar, I was particularly tickled by the thermal receipt printers for sending each other messages.
- Thaxll 1y agoSounds like they just reinvented internet.
- chasd00 1y agoI really like this, no feeds, no algorithms, just a network to do cool stuff with like minded people. Things like this are the answer to people complaining about the current state of the Internet. Making a network and getting your friends to use is how it all started.
- mattlondon 1y agoHypothetically, it be possible to achieve the same thing with a shared tailscale network, right? But can you kinda "federate" tailnets like this? So independent tailnets owned and run by individuals, but networked together into an inter-tailnet? You miss the fun and games of running your own DNS infra etc I guess.
- x2tyfi 1y agoThis is one of those cases where the work is the fun. It just depends on your personal definition of ‘work’ and ‘fun’.
- cornholio 1y agoKind of disappointed that "The promised LAN" runs on IPv4. One man's promised LAN is another man's hell.
- xori 1y agoI've been wanting to do this for ages. Originally I wanted to do this at the home router level, but that quickly got shut down when I got a test net up and running and my friends could control the Chromecasts in my house. For us a "tailscale" equivalent with SoftEther is what we used to manage the DNS/Tunneling for our fileshare/services. So cool to see more people playing in this space. Please post more! <3
- redn0vae 1y agoSome people have just opened up their entire home networks, other people have VLANs set up and only share that VLAN with TPL. However, as written in the article, everyone knows at least a few other people on TPL and that interpersonal real life trust is what keeps people from screwing around on everyone else's networks. Everyone is also an adult.
- mdickers47 1y agoI'm one of the people whose home LAN is completely exposed to TPL. There's an amount of "screwing around" where I wouldn't care. If you want to print an xkcd cartoon to my desk, fine, lol, a minor surprise in my day. If you print 1000 pages of dicks while I'm not home so that my paper and toner run out, that would be uncool. After years of caring about this problem, I came to believe that this kind of normative social contract cannot scale to include "everyone in the entire world," and that this kind of unwritten normative code is the only thing that makes any social space tolerable.
- kentonv 1y agoHeh, of all arguably-valid definitions of "LAN Party" I think this one is as far away from mine as you can get. Traditional LAN party: Everyone brings their computers to one place to connect via a LAN, where they play games, swap files, demo stuff to each other, etc. My LAN party: All my friends come over to my house and use the computers that I have already set up for them. Nobody brings their own. The point is to interact face-to-face, with video games as a catalyst. Swapping files and demos doesn't really happen since nobody brought their own computer. (My house: https://lanparty.house https://lanparty.house) The Promised LAN Party: The LAN is extended, virtually, across multiple houses, so that the participants can play games, swap files, and demo stuff without actually leaving home. It's arguably no longer "local" but functionally it enables the same activities as a LAN party, other than the face-to-face interaction part. I wonder who gets told their definition is "wrong" more. :)
- xarope 1y agoOnly 1 (one) cat picture. This is wrong... :-)
- sleepyams 1y agoThis is a pretty amazing setup! I think in 2025 I would definitely prefer something like this. However, I think back in "the day" part of what made LAN parties fun was that everyone's PC was so individualized. I remember all of my high school friends and I coming of age and building our PCs. I helped a lot of my friends build their PCs and we all chose different things (such as the amount of RGB LEDs, which I thought were tacky...). I remember a friend of a friend had a water cooling system and I was so excited about checking it out. Also, things like the desktop wallpaper you chose, etc, contributed to this. There was something very magical about it all. Lugging our PCs to each others houses was a real labor of love.
- jimmcslim 1y agoAnd a real risk of a shattered CRT screen! I remember carting my bougie 17” Viewsonic around in the back of my Hyundai Excel and wondering if it would pick up a crack along the voyage…
- joaohkfaria 1y agoCreating all of this is cool, but I don't know, it looks like a gimmick. The whole argument is: "Every other page I find myself on now has an AI generated click-bait title, shared for rage-clicks all brought-to-you-by-our-sponsors–completely covered wall-to-wall with popup modals, telling me how much they respect my privacy" Well, you'll still need content outside your friends group. Even with the "Promised LAN" you'll continue having the same experience. And what for? What are the use cases? Exchange files? Jokes? Chatting? The examples given: "It’s incredible how much network transport and a trusting culture gets you—there’s a 3-node IRC network, exotic hardware to gawk at, radios galore, a NAS storage swap, LAN only email, and even a SIP phone network of “redphones”." Ok, fun. But you'll still need WhatsApp/Facetime to talk to your mom, the whole internet to search and learn, sometimes social networks to communicate or to get a job, etc etc etc.
- benreesman 1y agoEh, I'm not sure how gimmicky it is. Without knowing how it's used, maybe the use of the network itself is just for fun, and nothing wrong with doing computer stuff for fun! But the networking chops to set something like this up are super practical. My current project has forced me to go from "i know how to use sockets in serious applications" to "i run GCE instance snapshots unmodified in a kernel-level TAP web of lies with tricky DNS overlaid to migrate complex workloads that can't go down to bare metal instances colocated in weird places". This is a pretty radical shift in perspective for a historical "network stuff, got it" guy like me. In the words of that guy from the 10x programmer meme video: "cloud edge is a hype!" The cloud is terrible in 2025: arthritic Xeon SKUs no one wants marked up 10000%, FinOps is like a casino that knows the whales need to neither win too much nor lose too much: they have active calls to action when the grift is so insane that they know you'll eventually do the books and churn out forever. The security theatre around IAM and shit is like going to the DMV, it's a whole thing to make an S3 bucket now. There are bright spots: fly is the perfect tool for a busy admin who needs to keep an eye on a bunch of prompt engineers with docker and confidence, but for the most part? Going back to bare metal is just a strict upgrade, and once you do that, knowledge like the knowledge these folks have from operating this thing? It becomes a whole new set of superpowers over and above standard out of the box networking. Standard networking is great when it meets your needs, but if it's all you know, you don't realize how big on an appetite your business has for wizard stuff.
- sleepybrett 1y agoSeems like this is a perfect opportunity to throw out all that custom jiggery pokery and just replace it with tailscale/wireguard.
- zrail 1y agoIt's not really custom. It's industry standard protocols for connecting independent (one might say "autonomous") networks. Tailscale is this on easy mode, of course. There's a blog post by apenwarr somewhere that I can't find right now that lays out the fundamental thesis of Tailscale and its very similar to these folks' manifesto.
- redn0vae 1y agoThe custom jiggery pokery is the point. This is like telling someone to throw away their hobby car they work on over the weekends and replace it with a new electric vehicle because it'll, "Just work." The configuring things, understanding the infrastructure, that is _the point_.
- arittr 1y agoThis is awesome - I've always fantasized about doing something like this, but Tailscale gets you pretty close without the interesting work.
- tucnak 1y agoIPSec, no IPv6, sad.
- rfl890 1y agoIsn't this a WAN and not LAN?
- x2tyfi 1y agoI love this idea and have considered doing something similar with friends for years. It’s cool to see how far they’ve taken it — much bigger than I had envisioned. My biggest/only concern - which they gloss over, mostly — is security. Combining networks puts added responsibility on every family that joins. What if friend-X’s kid downloads a virus-riddled torrent, which is capable of multiplying across hosts? Your own hosts/perimeter can always be protected, but there’s a loss of control with this setup.
- uneekname 1y agoI would love to learn more about how to set something like this up. I hope this group will consider open-sourcing more tools and instructions for others who hope to follow in their footsteps. As some other commenters have said, Headscale/Tailscale scratches some of this itch for me. Having individual devices connect directly to an overlay network is fabulous. However, I can never fully control Tailscale the way I wish to, and connecting networks together with it is difficult.
- paulryanrogers 1y agoSubmit this to LGR. Maybe he can spearhead a community like this.
- RainyDayTmrw 1y agoMaybe I'm missing something important. Is this purely an overlay network on top of regular IP with regular ISPs? Or have the got their own physical layer that I missed during reading? My confusion comes from LAN usually implying physical layer colocation. Otherwise, wouldn't it be a WAN?
- userbinator 1y agoThe network is made up of independently operated and heterogeneous nodes (currently three nodes, a mix of Debian using strongSwan and OpenBSD using iked), which peer over IPSec links. It's a VPN connecting sites together to form something like a LAN, but geographically separated. Multinational company "LAN"s are set up in a similar fashion.
- jessfraz 1y agoActually it’s pronounced the promised lawn :)
- bravesoul2 1y agoLooks like an internet (not The Internet) to me.
- tonymet 1y agoThere are true P2P lans using microwave radios for ham operators https://hamwan.org/ https://hamwan.org/ I knew guys who set up something like that in Culver City / West LA. It was slow, but it was self-reliant . Basic email, image transfer etc.
- immibis 1y agoNote that encryption is illegal in ham radio - and they don't care that you're tunneling some other protocol for which encryption is standard - it's still illegal. It's possible to use ham skills to make links that are not ham-class though, of course. For example encryption is (typically) legal on ISM band general use licenses (such as used by wifi).
- tonymet 1y agogood point on this . Are there bands where licenses are reasonable? i would be interested to rekindle this sort of network with some friends.
- immibis 1y agoI think for a reasonable processing fee you can get a license for a point to point link - but there are probably a bunch of requirements. The more public resources you want to take for private use the more you can expect it to cost. You might have heard about billion dollar spectrum auctions to companies like Verizon, but that's for the rights to use a certain band within the whole country (for cellphones). When it's just at one location it's a routine process. As I said though might have some requirements like the use of certified equipment - look them up
- FEELmyAGI 1y agoOff topic I suppose but in the early 2000s there was a large LAN party / gaming tournament using this name. Several friends drove hours to attend. https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/pc-lan-tourneys-if-you-come-to-one-lan-tournament-this-year-make-sure-this-is-it.853481/ https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/pc-lan-tourneys-if-you... https://web.archive.org/web/20020605175253/http://www.thepromisedlan.net/ https://web.archive.org/web/20020605175253/http://www.thepro...
- cindyllm 1y ago[dead]
- fc417fc802 1y ago> We're using our own non-standard and possibly ill-advised TLD, which is .tpl — short for The Promised LAN. Not ill advised at all. The internet was never meant to be centralized; more should be done to resist the ICANN hegemony. The replacement for manually swapping host file entries ought to have been something that placed control over identity in the hands of the individual instead of selling it.
- gtirloni 1y agoTrue but when ICANN decides .tpl is a new TLD owned by some corporation, what's your next move?
- CaptainFever 1y agoI find it funny how the manifesto complains about AI so much; meanwhile, my AI-friendly friend group uses these exact kinds of private servers/networks to get away from the hordes of AI haters and harassment on the public Internet. But I guess that's fine. We can each have our own spaces, and never the twain shall meet.
- nickdothutton 1y agoI love this idea, not least of all because it was one of the things on my "todo" pile that never gets any smaller. Congratulations guys. I miss the small community I found on the early Internet, before Eternal September. When small groups of people get together in a space that is both "confined" and "limitless" great things can happen.
- trklausss 1y agoWait until governments shut it down due to "piracy"... I hate when people that don't know anything about this scene make laws. It just kills the fun in them...
- swiftcoder 1y agoI think this is the most overkill virtual LAN I've ever heard of. Have y'all considered running your own ISP?
- guax 1y agoHey. That's my network name.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- remram 1y agoThere's a name for LANs that are not restricted to a local area: "network". Every mention of "LAN" in this entire article can be replaced with "network" without loss of meaning or vibe. Call a cat a cat.